If the late, great John Hughes had made a horror movie, it might look and sound a lot like Happy Death Day.
Director Christopher Landon and writer Scott Lobdell have crafted a fun, extremely funny ode to college life, wrapped in the genre trappings of an old-school slasher film, that borrows just enough from Groundhog Day to work as an homage and not smack of outright intellectual theft.
While the latest Blumhouse Productions PG-13 thriller may lack bloody kills or even jump scares, it more than makes up for that deficiency with snappy dialogue, above-average acting and a ridiculously memorable baby-face-masked killer.
Genre fans shouldn’t be surprised. Landon has a solid pedigree, which likely got him this gig, having written four Paranormal Activity films, drafted the screenplay for Disturbia (probably the only Shia LaBeouf film that most people will admit to liking), and pulled double duty (writing and directing) the cult-status-worthy Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, which was an unexpected hoot.
Happy Death Day is a huge leap forward for Landon, however, and he seizes the opportunity from the opening credits, which smartly foreshadow the wash-dry-repeat story structure about to unfold.
Popular sorority girl Teresa “Tree” Gelbman (the fantastic Jessica Rothe; more on her later) wakes up with a killer hangover in not-popular Carter Davis’ dorm room. It’s her birthday. She’s mortified and pissed.
Landon uses his camera to let viewers know immediately that Happy Death Day is geek-friendly. Carter’s room is adorned with classic movie posters (They Live, Mystery Science Theater 3000) and comic books. He’s a genuinely good guy, but Tree can’t see that — yet. She storms out and begins a walk of shame across the fictional Bayfield University campus that will become all-too-familiar, as Landon makes sure you notice the sequence of life events happening across the quad. The extended sequence also serves to introduce a host of red herrings — characters who may, or may not, later be revealed to want Tree dead.
One of those people is Tim, a former date, whom Tree (literally) barrels into while rushing back to her sorority house. Tim complains that Tree hasn’t returned his texts. She reminds him they only had one date. But it was a nice date, he says.
“You had a nice time. I was miserable,” Tree states. “Who takes their first date to Subway? It’s not like you have a foot-long.”
Part of the early fun is watching how the filmmakers play up Tree’s mean girl/horny co-ed persona. Within a few minutes, we’ve already met three people she possibly had sex with, including a married professor/local physician.
“I have patients,” he tells Tree, as she corners him inside his office at the local hospital. “And I’m losing mine,” she retorts, locking lips.
By the end of the day, Tree sets off to a fraternity party, and first encounters the film’s movie maniac, a killer who wears a mask modeled after the school’s baby-faced mascot, who guts her with a butcher knife.
Then poof! Tree wakes up back in Carter’s room, hungover as hell, and rightfully confused as to why it’s her birthday all over again. As she embarks once more on her walk of shame, Tree realizes something is seriously wrong.
“I’m totally having déjà vu right now,” she tells frenemy/sorority president Danielle (Rachel Matthews, making a memorable film debut).
“I have that all the time,” Danielle tells her. “It means someone is thinking of you and masturbating. It happens to me like five times a day.”
Happy Death Day revels in the small details of college and sorority life. The social cliques, the youthful indiscretions, the catty put-downs. But it also slowly unspools Tree’s backstory — she and her mother shared the same birthday, but now her mom has been dead for three years. That painful memory has helped forge Tree’s blithely bitchy demeanor, but reliving the same day over and over awakens Tree to the fact that she doesn’t like the woman she’s become.
Over and over, she tries to avoid the masked killer. Over and over, she fails.
When she finally breaks down and trusts Carter enough to tell him what she’s experiencing, he’s understandably skeptical.
“Will you please stop staring at me like I took a dump on your mom’s head?” she begs.
Carter urges her to use the opportunity to her advantage to try and ferret out who might want her dead. This sparks an inspired sequence where Tree begins spying on her list of possible attackers — Tim, Danielle, the hot married doctor, his wife. As she learns more about each character, the end result is still the same — she dies a horrible death at the hands of her mysterious stalker.
Some genre fans may grumble that most of Happy Death Day’s kills are either off-camera or entirely bloodless. I found that eventually the kills take a backseat to your investment in Tree and her personal arc.
For that, all the credit goes to Rothe, who is simply fantastic in this role, imbuing Tree with so much personality that when she finally thinks she’s figured out the reason she keeps reliving the same horrible day, you want her to prevail. She’s not a victim. She is a worthy, feisty final girl for young women of her generation to root for.
Lobdell’s script maintains its razor-sharp social critique through a flurry of late third-act twists and reveals. By the end, you likely will have already figured out exactly who is behind the creepy baby mask. I called the killer within the first 15 minutes, but I wasn’t disappointed to be proved correct.
Happy Death Day, ultimately, isn’t about who’s doing the killing or why — although the why is yet another smart poke at the petty politics of college life that sadly make headlines and fuel Lifetime movies-of-the-week.
Much like Hughes’ birthday classic, Sixteen Candles, this is a film about a young woman blossoming, on her own terms, without sacrificing her inner goodness to succeed.
It’s hard not to imagine Happy Death Day being another financial success for Blumhouse. But, unlike some of the company’s other, lesser-quality films, this one feels fresh and original, a quality B-movie that people should embrace and champion, like Get Out, The Purge and The Visit.
Just a word of warning: Avoid the birthday cupcakes — those carbs can be killer.
Below, some random guy's ideas about 13 things you missed in the trailer:
This article appears in Oct 19-26, 2017.