Happy Death Day – A review

A sorority girl Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) wakes up on her birthday. Little does she know that it will be her last as that night she will be killed by a assailant wearing a baby mask. At least, it would be her last if not for the strange occurrence of her reliving the same day again and again, thus giving her time to solve her own murder and become a better person in the process.

As I wrote my last mixed-tape movies list (Link) three movies popped up about people reliving the same day over and over. Groundhog day is the famous example, then there’s 12:01 which takes the same concept and puts a crime-twist in it. And, more recently there was Live, Die, Repeat which is the action version. But I hadn’t seen Happy Death Day yet. This would be the slasher variant -But strangely enough, for a horror movie, one with very little blood (more suggestion).

Now, I’m not always in the mood for slasher. And, truth be told, I should stop looking at rottentomatoes and make up my own mind. In short: I kept prosponing this movie. Which, in retrospect, wasn’t the wisest thing to do because Happy Death Day is a wonderful genre-film.

Time Travel a day at a time
I am biased. I’m a big fan of time travel movies So Happy Death Day is right up my alley. Even though criticasters might start huffing and puffing that the concept of ‘reliving a day’ isn’t fresh or new anymore. I actually find it rather refreshing to take a new look at construct.

True some of the basic plot points stay intact. For instance, the main character pointing out things that he/she has seen before. Or the story arch of self-improvement. But there are lots of things to change if you change the main character from a worldweary weatherman to an obnoxious sorority girl.

Slight apoiler: I for one would definitely nude-walk in front of the college if I knew nobody would remember.

If you have the power, why not use it?

Happy Death Day never once proclaims itself as original and unique. It even mentions Groundhog Day and Bill Murray by name. All this movie tries to do is take a different approach at the ‘reliving a day’ concept. Changing ‘love by self-improvement’ to ‘self-improvement by slasher hoodlum’.
It works! It is a new take on the concept and it works as such (with a lovely little romance to boot). That is, there are one or two nitpicks.

Mysterious nitpicks
The main mystery of who is trying to kill Tree isn’t much of a mystery. You can solve it pretty easily about halfway through. This is something you have to accept going into the movie.
True, as a counter Happy Death Day does ask the viewer to keep paying attention to details that other movies would disregard as ‘suspension of disbelief’.

I can’t count the times I saw somebody escape from handcuffs. This isn’t a spoiler for the movie by the way.

Another nitpick is the ‘by magic’ element. The reason why I prefer 12:01 over Groundhog day is because the ‘timebounce’ is explained. There is a reason why the main character relives the same day over and over. Not so much in Groundhog day (a magic rodent perhaps) and neither in Happy Death Day. The girl relives her days by magic – deal with it.

But, again, to counter it Happy Death Day does bring in an end date to this whole ‘living forever’ to the table. This is the first movie I know of in which the main character does relive the day but it’s finite.

One -often mentioned- nitpick, however, that I don’t agree with are the cardboard-characters. The sorority girls our heroine is living with are all (pretty much) terrible people. As is Tree herself at the start.
But that’s kind of what this kind of movie requires. Like many crime- and slasher-movies before it it needs additional characters to fill the slots of potential perps or victims. And something the slasher genre learned long ago is that all these characters can’t have enough screen time to flesh out the persona. So the short-cut is to make archetypes with a parody element. The additional benefit is that the viewer won’t be too attached to see this character die.

This parody element is then -of course- further explored/emphasized by highlighting horror-trope after trope (empty hospitals, running victim, masked killer and so on).

Dying for the light
And dying our girl Tree does, constantly and hilariously. There isn’t a slasher weapons trope left out of this movie (well, maybe that curling iron from Sleep away Camp). Knifes, axes, guns, gasoline, baseball bats and many more; they are all in there.

This increases the parody feel of the movie (as Scream was years before). This movie is entertainment in the best sense of the word. It’s a movie for a night out with friends to chat, watch and hide behind a pillow (a ‘sleepover movies’ if you’d want to call it that).

Rothe has tremendous fun undergoing each and every death scene (especially when she has died several times before at that point) with a look of ‘oh not again’ bringing the morbid joke home.

Moreover she (and her fellow actresses) are having a hoot playing these over the top brats with a world view as narrow as pencil line. Something about the success of Scream Queens stuck.

A fun fact about me: this movie takes place on a Monday the 18th.

My birthday, this year, was Monday the 18th.

I watched this movie with friends on this monday the 18th. Cue the creepy music.

Visually the movie makes good use of the budgeted story (it being a Bloomhouse production after all). There are around three main sets that with simple lighting and dressing bring a new tone to the screen as the movie progresses.

The fun part about these ‘reliving a day’ movies is that the cameraman gets to redo the same shots over and over again. This, just to establish the fact that the day is indeed repeating. Happy Death Day does play with it occasionally (having the character Carter bump his head in the cupboard).

To end with the look of the killer. An easy game to play whenever you are watching a slasher with a masked killer on the loose is to check whether the killer is male or female. That would even out your chances of pinpointing the right one.

If a movie is playing fair (meaning: the actor/actress who turns out to be the killer was also wearing the killer suit in the attack-scenes) you can often tell by the body and/or the stance whether you are dealing with a male or a female (Crimson Rivers is a prime example).

So the better the suit depends on the inability for the viewer to make any guess about gender. The fact that this movie also managed to tie that whole creepy baby mask into the fictional world is a big bonus. Ever since Valentine’s day I wonder why nobody calls the cops when they see somebody walking around dressed in black with a creepy mask (that’s the reason why Michael Myers only got away with it on Halloween).

Dead again/alive again
Taking Happy Death Day for what it is: a fun entertaining movie that takes the concept of ‘reliving a day’ and puts a horror/slasher spin on it- I would recommend it to anybody. With the lack of blood in this movie I would even recommend it to my parents.
Everybody involved brought their best to make Tree Gelbman’s birthday one to remember again and again.