All hail the return of the slasher! HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) is exactly as much fun as you hope it is
#31DaysOfHorror: October 14
This October, I’ll be reviewing 31 horror movies in 31 days! You can see the ongoing list of what I’ve watched and reviewed here.
The Plot
A sorority girl finds herself trapped in a time loop on her birthday. She wakes up in a dorm room with a stranger; she goes to class; she gets killed by a creep in a baby mask; everything repeats itself.
She eventually figures out a reliable way to convince her hookup that she’s telling the truth, and he tells her she has infinite lives, unlimited chances to solve her own murder, if she ever wants to see tomorrow…
My Review
I love slasher movies, and I especially love holiday-themed slasher movies. The slasher subgenre’s first breakout smash was of course Halloween, but even that movie owes a debt to Black Christmas, a movie about sorority girls being killed in a number of Christmas-themed ways. After Halloween there were an absurd number of imitators, including April Fool’s Day, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me, New Years Evil, and more. The subgenre has really waned in recent decades, though, as slashers have moved mostly to the low-budget home video and streaming market.
But now, in theaters this weekend is Happy Death Day, an homage to the slashers of yore… with a twist. This time, instead of a killer going on a rampage and killing lots of coeds, this killer only has one victim. Who they’re killing over… and over… and over… Because the victim is reliving the same day, an infinite number of times, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
A Groundhog Day-esque plot where characters relive the same day over and over again is a tried-and-true formula that has been used in a number of different films, especially in recent years. Tom Cruise died over and over again in the sci-fi action movie Edge of Tomorrow. Marlon Wayans woke up in a hotel elevator on the morning of his wedding day in the Netflix original Naked. Even earlier this year, in the young adult fantasy Before I Fall, a girl relives the day of her death an infinite number of times (although she doesn’t necessarily die each day; she just keeps waking up on the same morning, all over again).
Here, though, director Christopher B. Landon applies the formula to a sort of hybrid slasher-horror-comedy-romance, and the results are a blast. The repetition means that the killer gets to kill the main character (whose name is “Tree,” which, strangely, nobody seems to consider odd) in a number of inventive, genre-honoring ways, including your stabbings, your chokings, your shattered-bong-throat-slashings.
The main character (who, again, is named Tree?!) is played by Jessica Rothe, who is surely a star on the rise. She gets put through the ringer here. At first, when she doesn’t realize she’s about to die, she’s a pitch-perfect bitchy sorority girl who doesn’t care about the people around her. Each day, though, Rothe peels back the layers of the character (I just want to stress… TREE? Tree Gelbman.) to uncover more facets of her personality, and she’s great at it. Some days she’s overwhelmed and panicky, her mascara-streaked face accurately conveying her sanity on the brink. Some days she decides to be confident (helpfully, there’s a montage set to the Demi Lovato song of the same name), doing all of the things she wishes she could do everyday like dying her hair and walking around campus naked. The montage where we see her start to come to terms with her situation is hilarious, and Rothe really sells the physical comedy inherent in having a killer in a baby mask pop up at inopportune moments.
Supporting characters are solid, as well. Rachel Matthews plays an incredibly quotable rival sorority girl named Danielle — don’t be surprised if you hear people saying “What is breakfast, Becky?!” Israel Broussard (The Bling Ring) is the cute dorky boy whose dorm room she wakes up in each morning, earnestly trying to do his best to help her even though he has no idea he’s done all of this before. His dorm room is papered with classic movie posters, including Repo Man and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie; one triumphant shot where they think they might finally live through the night sees the two crouched down on the floor, the logo for They Live! prominently displayed between them.
So: is Happy Death Day good enough to spawn a franchise, like any good slasher? I’d say so. The combination of the time-loop conceit and the instantly recognizable evil-baby mask are easily replicable, and if any successive installments are half as much fun as this one is, I’m sold.
But where can I watch it? Happy Death Day is in theaters now.
