Since Halloween is upcoming, I decided to watch a scary movie. Since I don't really do horror movies or slasher movies or anything like that, I picked something pretty mild and tongue-in-cheek.
Happy Death Day! is basically a cross between
Scream! and
Groundhog Day.
Theresa "Tree" Gelbman is a sorority girl, the awful, stuck-up, snobby sorority girl stereotype, the kind that gets murdered all the time in slasher movies. And Tree gets murdered all the time, too. She gets murdered in the first few minutes of the movie, and pretty regularly afterward. But each time she gets murdered, she just wakes up again, in a stranger's bed, to start the day all over again. It happens to be her birthday, which is a particularly difficult day for Tree, even when she's not being murdered.
After some failed attempts to escape her fate, she embarks on a plan: if she can stop getting murdered, she'll live to see a new day (instead of the same one.) She sets out to solve her own murder. But Tree is a pretty awful person, and as she starts making a list of people who'd want to kill her it dawns on her that it's a pretty long list.
I liked this a lot. It's not very scary-- it delivers some jump scares and scenes that you'll want to shout at Tree to get her
**** head in the game. But there's nothing that'll keep you up at night. It's not gory or sadistic or terrifying. And knowing that she'll be back for another round makes it hard to be too worried for her. Mostly I liked the way the movie makes you fall for Tree. Even though she starts off as the worst stereotypical stock character, by the end of the movie you'll love her. Each time she relives her day, you find out a little more about her and get to know her a little better. The whole movie is carried on the little shoulders of Jessica Rothe as the main character, and she's wonderful.
Also: "DUDE DID YOU TOTALLY HIT THAT PRIME
**** OR WHAT?!" Like Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, it gets more hilariously aggravating each time.
-k