Happy Death Day
This is a good horror film with a sophisticated quality that will surprise you.
Happy Death Day pays homage to Groundhog Day (1993), with the latter movie actually mentioned in the closing scenes. In summary, a distracted female college student is brutally killed on the night of her birthday only to wake up the next morning in the men’s dorm and forced to relive the same thing over again next day. Though it sounds a bit nonsensical, it finds a way to capture the attention of the most cynical members of the audience.
To begin with, all of the actors are largely unknown, beginning with Jessica Rothe who does a superior job playing Tree Gelbman, the student facing daily death. Having gotten terribly wasted the previous evening, she repeatedly wakes up in the dorm room of a male student, hungover with no memory of how she got there. Though Tree does recall being killed the night before, everyone else looks at her as if she is half nuts. That includes Carter Davis (a delightful performance by Israel Broussard), the dorm student who tries to help her.
As each day passes, and death awaits her, Tree grows a little wiser in the process. Quite frankly, you begin to think that Director Christopher Landon is a descendent of Alfred Hitchcock.
I’m giving nothing away to say that Tree’s hideous journey will continue if she can’t find a way to dispose of her killer. You might find yourself a bit intrigued in guessing how this movie will turn out.
