K-SCORE: 79
Director: Christopher B. Landon
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Starring: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken, Rob Mello
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“If there’s one thing I know about college, it’s filled with insane party-obsessed young people ripe for the murdering.”
Groundhog Day only on a college campus and with a girl that’s constantly getting killed - yes please! Though Happy Death Day was doomed out the gate as soon as I noticed that it was made with a PG-13 rating in mind. Who wants to watch that? You’ve signed up to watch a vain sorority girl eat it over and over again in a day that starts with a one-night stand and ends in a frat party. Why in the world would you want to watch that without gratuitous violence, the vile language of the collegiate inebriate, and nudity to match the character who is involved in not one but four running sexual relationships? Whoever reimagined this story told in such a way did a terrible disservice to an otherwise brilliant idea.
“The same thing worked in... The Edge of Tomorrow”
Happy Death Day’s trailer had me so excited that I fist-pumped and did a little dance when I first saw it. This is the kind of movie that I’ll dream up when tipsy with my college friends. Most of the time I want to watch a movie, it’s to relax and be entertained. Thus I’m not browsing Netflix looking for Sicario. I want absurdity, a sense of humor, action, outrage, and originality. Granted the base concept was ripped off the Bill Murray classic, but the twist of the premise is more than enough for a reimagining of the concept. The same thing worked when done sci-fi style in the film formerly known as The Edge of Tomorrow. To some extent, Happy Death Day delivers on its promise. You will get to watch this girl die over and over again, and there are a handful of moments thrown in there that are clever extensions of the “waking up with the same memory” idea. Even the Universal title screen gets into the spirit of the occasion, (triply so for us since our disk was uniquely broken that we had to watch that pre-menu reel five times before it would play properly). And the narrative was crafted by a competent writer, who develops characters and layers in twists.
Ultimately though, it’s a disappointment because of its squandered potential. The backstory of the protagonist amounts to wasted time. Far too many of the characters are but smoke and mirror suspects, eating precious minutes. A class on particle physics goes nowhere, and indicate that the story can’t decide whether or not it wants to explain why the looped day is happening or not. And the idea that this girl wouldn’t be able to best an attacker who uses knives and that she knows is coming after only a few attempts is implausible, but, to be fair, it’s also part of the reason it’s fun to watch. You want to tell the person next to you, “I could have solved my own murder and thwarted my attacker in four days flat.” Once trimmed, there could have been way more days with way more creative deaths and way more collegiate hijinx. If there’s one thing I know about college, it’s filled with insane party-obsessed young people ripe for the murdering.
I have to give Happy Death Day a lot of points though. For one, the bar on cinema keeps getting lower, so by comparison to anything I’ve watched lately, it’s great. I had fun watching this, and as soon as our hero Theresa “Tree” Gelbman kills herself to reset a day she could have won on because the nice guy was dead, I was rooting for her to live almost as much as I had been rooting for her to die at the beginning. That’s fine work.