I love horror movies and I particularly love slasher movies. When I was a kid, slasher movies dominated the horror genre, but they are pretty rare these days. In the 3+ years that I have been going to the movies every week, I have not seen a single slasher movie in a theater as 90% of horror films these days are of the haunting/possession variety. Therefore, I was somewhat interested in Happy Death Day. Sure, it borrows a concept from a comedy and it has an un-slasher-like PG-13 rating, but surely there is a chance that it could be good, right? Spoiler alert: No.
Obviously from the trailers, Happy Death Day is a horror version of Groundhog Day. In case you somehow don’t piece that together, don’t worry because one of the characters will point it out to you. A sorority girl named Tree (presumably named that because her parents were hippie assholes) wakes up hungover in a guy’s dorm seemingly after a romantic night of drunken plowing. It’s Tree’s birthday and she goes about her normal daily routine of being an insipid bitch until somebody murders her. She then wakes up back in the dorm room, thus beginning a time cycle as she tries to discover the identity of her daily murderer. Not only does this steal the basic concept Groundhog Day, it also lifts its entire narrative structure and character arc from that classic. All of the major plot beats are the same. She starts out angry and confused, then gradually accepts it, then has fun with it for a while, then realizes that she’s become a pretty shitty person and tries to make amends for things. It’s such a blatant rip-off that I was somewhat expecting her to learn the piano and start making ice sculptures.
I’m not entirely sure if this is supposed to be a horror film or a comedy (even though it was clearly marketed as the former). And I don’t mean that it comes across as a legitimate horror comedy, like House or Return of the Living Dead or something like that. I mean that I’m not sure if the filmmakers knew what they were supposed to be doing. The most effective parts are comedic, especially when Tree starts having fun with her unlimited lives and stops giving a fuck. The reveal of the killer’s identity and motive is so fucking ridiculous that it comes across as parody, but the movie plays it straight. The killer’s mask is absurd and stems from the fact that this university’s mascot is the Babies. I’m not sure if that was meant as a joke. It’s funny, but I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be, as if the script was a comedy but the director didn’t really get the joke.
As much as this might work as a comedy, it sure as shit doesn’t work as a horror film. Most horror films nowadays are watered-down PG-13 horseshit, but a PG-13 slasher film really pushes the limits of just how bland modern movies have become. There is also an inherent flaw with using the time-loop concept for a horror film: If the audience knows that things will be reset when the character dies, then how could there be any suspense? The very concept of the movie prevents it from being scary. In theory, it could at least be fun if the killer repeatedly kills the same characters in increasingly over-the-top ways. But this is PG-13, so no gore is allowed and the opportunity is lost.
I have some nice things to say about it. The performances are surprisingly strong. I don’t recognize the lead actress (Jessica Rothe), but she is really good and carries the film despite playing a character with the depth of a puddle. I hope to see her in something better soon. There are also some genuinely clever bits, but the film would really work better if it was stripped of the horror elements and was just left as an inferior version of Groundhog Day.
This feels like a Halloween episode of a Teen Nick show. I can’t really recommend it, even if you just want to go to the theater to see a horror movie for Halloween. Even with that mindset, the film would work better if you go into it expecting a comedy. But, judging from the audience that I was with, 12-year-old girls will have a good time screaming and giggling during this. That was not a compliment.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Death_Day#/media/File:Happy_Death_Day_poster.png
