Review: Happy Death Day (2017)

Happy Death Day (2017)

Rated PG-13 for violence/terror, crude sexual content, language, some drug material and partial nudity

Score: 3 out of 5

A horror-comedy riff on Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day is precisely the sort of movie I like to see come out in October. It's by no means a game-changer, and if you're looking for extreme bloodshed or a profound twist on the usual, you won't find it here. What it is, however, is funny, creative, well-shot, and well-acted, such that I was able to forgive its plot holes and lack of big scares. It's a perfect mass-appeal Halloween-time flick that I can see staying in rotation on streaming services around this time of year for a while to come, the sort of movie that really keeps the genre going: mostly conventional films that by and large don't stray from the norm beyond their gimmicks, but where the people involved still cared about putting out a quality product.

The setup is slasher boilerplate: sorority sister Teresa "Tree" Gelbman is celebrating her birthday today, and is going to be killed that evening by a masked, knife-wielding maniac. The thing is, every time she dies, Tree wakes up where she was at the start of the day, nursing a hangover in the dorm room of a boy named Carter who she doesn't know but who says he didn't sleep with her. Now, Tree has ample opportunity to solve her own murder, all the while looking back on the various decisions she's made in life, many of which reveal that she has a lot of growing up to do.

While the ultimate reveal of who the killer was offered a fun fake-out and a subversion of a tired horror trope, it does suffer from plot holes when one thinks about the murder weapon and location during the reveal versus the killer's stated plot and motive. Regardless, it's hardly the most important part of the movie; that, as is often the case in these sorts of time-loop films, is the growth of the protagonist. Tree is, for lack of a better word, an asshole at the start of the film, a careless airhead who sleeps with her teacher for better grades, blows off dinner with her father even though her mother had died on her birthday years ago, and otherwise treats those around her like dirt. It takes her four days before she fully realizes that what she's going through isn't just a bad dream or deja vu. Again, if you've seen one time-loop movie, be it Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, or anything in between, you'll know that the film culminates in Tree learning some valuable life lessons in the course of figuring out who keeps killing her, the film's real climax being her developing some emotional maturity rather than stopping the killer. Fortunately, however, that arc is sold very well here. Jessica Rothe is outstanding as Tree, capable of being funny, terrified, and remorseful as her character slowly develops over the course of the film; she is somebody I'd love to see more of in the future. Had she delivered a bad performance, trust me, there would've been no end to my puns about her character's name and her being "wooden", so for that alone, I'm grateful. Israel Broussard, likewise, is funny and charming as the skater boy Carter who Tree falls for (over and over again), breathing some life into another part that could've been generic.

On the directing front, while this film's position on the sliding scale of horror-comedy is weighted more towards the "horror" end, overall I found that the comedy worked quite a bit better. We see Tree's frustration mounting at the things she has to put up with on that day, from Carter's roommate barging in to ask him about the hot piece of ass he thinks he nailed to the repeated discovery that the professor she's sleeping with is married, while also witnessing her taking advantage of her newfound freedom and her... creative efforts to narrow down her suspect list, during which time she learns plenty of interesting things about the people around her. The scares, unfortunately, never really worked beyond the immediate, in-your-face jump scares, though that being said, it didn't really feel like anything more was the film's intention. There is a reveal towards the middle of the film that Tree isn't coming back at full strength every time the day resets, and that she's slowly getting worn out by dying over and over again, which was a nice twist on the time-loop concept. While I could think of a way to go without this twist and mine both some depth and some truly existential horror out of the film's premise (being forced to relive the day you get brutally murdered, with no end in sight), it would've been difficult to mesh with the tone of the rest of the film unless the filmmakers wanted to go really pitch-black with the comedy. Furthermore, it gave some urgency to Tree's quest, as she couldn't just keep relying on trial and error to find the killer.

The Bottom Line

What you see is what you get here, and fortunately, this film delivers in the important areas. It's a fun horror romp with a great heroine and a great sense of humor, even if the writing does stumble at the end, and it's recommended for anyone looking to see something both scary and funny this October.