Editor’s Note: Happy Death Day opens in wide theatrical release October 13, 2017.
If Happy Death Day feels like a rerun of a movie you’ve already seen, that’s because you have. It’s a slightly-blood-spattered Groundhog Day – emphasis on the “slightly,” since the film is essentially bowdlerized so that its target teen crowd doesn’t have to sneak in after purchasing tickets to Lego Ninjago Movie. Yes, here is a horror-comedy that has neither teeth nor balls, a TV re-edit that actually made it onto theater screens. Which is…fine, in its own way. At least parents can feel safer sending their kids to the movies than leaving them unattended while The Walking Dead plays on AMC 15 hours a day. But selfishly, as a smug seen-it-all critic, I would’ve appreciated something – anything – even slightly more transgressive.
Happy Death Day only occasionally approaches the bullseye of anarchic fun it’s constantly aiming for, in part because of its acute sanitization and in part due to sheer filmmaking laziness.
You know the set-up – and if you don’t, then buckle up for the creative ride of your film-going life – one momentous day repeats itself over and over for a single person for no apparent reason other than to give said person an opportunity to correct some aspect of the day. I suppose there’s no better way to correct a day than by making sure you don’t die at the end of it, and such is the premise of Happy Death Day, in which our heroine is savagely murdered on her birthday but mercifully receives countless celestial mulligans.
That heroine is named Tree…because why not? Tree is about as stereotypical a college sorority bitch as one could imagine, curiously not dissimilar from Bill Murray’s arrogant narcissistic churl at the beginning of Groundhog Day. Tree is played by Jessica Rothe, about as well as is reasonably possible under circumstances by which she is portrayed as hatefully as the filmmakers deem allowable while only getting to indulge her vices on a tertiary level. I’m not sitting here begging for something explicit or salacious, but the degree to which the film pulls its punches is constantly and glaringly noticeable. This seemingly purified strategy actually only highlights Tree’s negative portrayal, since she is only permitted level-one snark rather than the comic relief of going even darker, which would actually humanize rather than objectify as Basic Bitch Who Must Earn the Right to Live. But there I go trying to intellectualize a trifle.
Here is a horror-comedy that has neither teeth nor balls, a TV re-edit that actually made it onto theater screens. Which is…fine, in its own way. At least parents can feel safer sending their kids to the movies than leaving them unattended while The Walking Dead plays on AMC 15 hours a day.
In short, Tree’s death day also happens to be her birthday, which is cute enough and is actually played with to some intriguing narrative and character effect by director Christopher Landon and screenwriter Scott Lobdell. Tree relives this fateful birth/death day innumerable times, and it’s pleasantly ironic that the film grows less irritating throughout its repetition. She gets to build relationships she otherwise would’ve blown off, starts an investigation into who her killer could be, and in the process becomes a person of enough moral fiber that she deserves to survive brutal murder, I guess? Through it all, Happy Death Day only occasionally approaches the bullseye of anarchic fun it’s constantly aiming for, in part because of its acute sanitization and in part due to sheer filmmaking laziness. It’s very clear the film wants to play with genre, tweak conventions and play against expectations, and has a clear attitude about itself. But every time it self-censors or takes the easy way out, I kept having déjà vu to what a better version of this movie might’ve been.
It’s very clear that Happy Death Day wants to play with genre, tweak conventions and play against expectations, and has a clear attitude about itself. But every time it self-censors or takes the easy way out, I kept having déjà vu to what a better version of this movie might’ve been.
