Happy Death Day (2017)
A college student relives the day of her murder with
both its unexceptional details and terrifying end until she discovers
her killer's identity.
Director:
Christopher LandonWriter:
Scott LobdellStars:
A teenage girl, trying to enjoy her birthday, soon realizes that this is her final one. That is, if she can figure out who her killer is. She must relive that day, over and over again, dying in a different way each time. Can she solve her own murder?
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
13 October 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Again See more »Box Office
Budget:
$5,000,000 (estimated)
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Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorDid You Know?
Trivia
Originally titled "Half to Death". See more »Connections
References Back to the Future (1985)
Jessica Rothe and Israel Broussard star in the horror-comedy from 'Paranormal Activity' franchise writer Christopher Landon.
Reuniting a variety of veterans of the Paranormal Activity and Insidious series, Happy Death Day offers
a comedic take on the usual stalker-slasher fare, which may sound more
promising than it actually proves to be. Lightweight and accessible
enough to appeal to its short attention span PG-13 target audience, this
is largely disposable entertainment that doesn't suggest obvious
franchisability or significant staying power.
Cultivating relatability shouldn't be a problem, though, as the
filmmakers offer up an easily identifiable mean-girl type as their
protagonist who's headed for a comeuppance. University sorority sister
Theresa (Jessica Rothe), nicknamed "Tree," displays all the traits of a
privileged campus minority, including a haughty attitude, superior
self-regard and shocking lack of empathy. So it's a bit of a comedown
when she wakes up totally hungover in the dorm room bed of
her hipster-ish classmate Carter (Israel Broussard), who's clearly not
remotely in her rarified league. Swearing him to silence about their
embarrassing hookup, she tries to go about her day unperturbed, but
since it's also her birthday there's a certain level of unpredictability
involved.
She's not pleased, for instance, with her roommate Lori's (Ruby
Modine) surprise birthday wishes or her estranged father's attempts to
call, opting to avoid any celebrations beyond paying a visit to her
pre-med professor Gregory's (Charles Aitken) office to unsuccessfully
reignite their secret fling. Then her downer day ends in the worst
possible way when some masked psycho attacks her that night on her way
to a party, repeatedly stabbing Tree to death. Only her life isn't over
yet, as she discovers when she wakes up in Carter's bed and her birthday
from Hell begins all over again, ending abruptly with her inevitable
murder.
Clearly it's going to take some time for Tree to work things through
and unmask her killer if she's going to survive her life on auto-rewind.
With each repetition of the incidents leading up to her demise, she
discovers additional details about the circumstances surrounding her
death and the identity of her killer, who wears the baby-faced mask of
her university's sports mascot. Enlisting Carter in her attempt to cheat
death appears to be her only option, since snotty sorority president
Danielle (Rachel Matthews) and her other housemates refuse to tolerate
any slacking or slumming that might tarnish their organization's
reputation.
While scripter and comic-book scribe Scott Lobdell (Marvel's Uncanny X-Men)
quickly demonstrates the repetitive pattern provoking Tree's recurring
reincarnations within the film's first 15 minutes, the exact mechanism
behind her mysterious fate remains unexamined. Brisk pacing helps
obscure this oversight, though, with Lobdell trickling out just enough
information to justify another iteration of the cycle before delivering a
couple of imaginative twists toward the film's conclusion.
Rothe proves game for taking on Tree's escalating tribulations, but
doesn't really get a chance to shine until her character goes on the
offensive against her tormentor, devising some increasingly clever
strategies to corner her killer. As her potential love interest,
Broussard gets stuck with an underwritten part that could have benefited
from a more focused motivation beyond just trying to get the girl.
Director Christopher Landon — who built his career with a series of scripts for the Paranormal Activity franchise before directing Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones —
here disposes with much of the mythmaking that made that series so
memorable. Although concentrating on delivering easily digestible
situations and scene progressions, Landon does demonstrate some enticing
visual flair that gets rather diminished by the repetitiveness of the
plot.
The filmmakers' appropriation of Groundhog Day's narrative
template will probably be of little concern to younger viewers and
doesn't really grate as much as might be expected, even when the
characters are forced to gratefully accept patently obvious life
lessons.
FINAL RATING: 7/10 for the genre and 6/10 overall. A cool horror movie with an intelligent topic and storytelling, a sexy main character and a super nice funny twist, which works good. Good job and the movie is better than expected.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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