Happy Death Day ended up on my radar when it did really well with audiences, but unlike Don’t Breathe, I was not curious enough to see it in theaters and waited until it was available on DVD. The film is Groundhog Day with an initially Irreversible tone, but ultimately Halloween: 20 Years Later vibe. The movie is about a sorority girl who keeps reliving her birthday and being killed. Because I watch too many movies and TV shows, I actually figured out fairly quickly who the culprit was.
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Even fairly progressive TV shows like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit always find a way to make a woman the villain so I figured out it was the roommate, but didn’t fully understand how she was connected to the killer in the hospital. I thought there was going to be a connection between her mother’s death, their shared birthday and her attempted murder, but Happy Death Day made no connection. I did appreciate that when she finally did everything perfectly, it was not the day that stuck so she never gets to be her best self in everyone’s memory. Ha! No Hallmark ending for you!
I appreciated that the movie’s lesson wasn’t for Tree to be a nicer person although I actually liked Tree more as the movie progressed because her original self was kind of horrid (she spit at an Uber driver). I adored how Tree reacted with common sense to try and avoid pitfalls then began to have fun with her affliction. Jessica Rothe started giving me Melissa Benoist’s Supergirl with a more mature vibe. Happy Death Day heavily critiqued the unhealthiness of Greek life, including rape culture, but it was super sad that it was barely a blip in her day to believe that a guy would sleep with her if she was passed out drunk, i.e. rape. If I have one quibble, I don’t understand how the killer(s) were able to locate her or get in her room when she barricaded the door unless her roommate never left.
Happy Death Day is not as meta and clever as Scream, but still an enjoyable and entertaining slasher flick. The moral is not to be the best person, but to be mean to the right people.