Happy Death Day

I saw a pre-screening of Happy Death Day and let me tell you, it was one of the most fun theater experiences I've had. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, which is definitely for the best. If anyone walks into a movie about a sorority girl living the same day over and over and being killed over and over and expects it to be some genre-defying horror perfection, that's on them.

However, that doesn't mean this is a bad movie by any means. Jessica Rothe as Tree Gelbman and Israel Broussard as Carter Davis are fantastic as the two leads. They have excellent chemistry and make us root for them. Rothe's character wasn't the typical horror movie sorority girl, either. She was cunning and badass. She made us believe she could actually figure this mess out. If you don't change your mind on who the killer is at least twice throughout the film, you aren't paying attention.

There are curveballs thrown left and right, which made my theater gasp and yell numerous times. You think the movie is about to end on at least two different occasions. The script is smart, there's horror, there's comedy, there's drama. Happy Death Day takes you in numerous directions, while also making sure you have fun along the way. This is definitely one of my all-time favorite campy horror flicks out there. It even pokes fun at Groundhog Day, which it very clearly took some inspiration from. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys horror; again, it doesn't redefine the genre and there are definitely an abundance of clichés. With that, though, there are still a handful of clever moments I certainly was not expecting.

On the day of her birthday, the college student Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) awakes in the male dormitory on the bed of Carter Davis (Israel Broussard). She learns that she was totally wasted in the previous night and she leaves Carter to meet her snobish Kappa friends. Then she despises Carter that brings her bracelet that was forgotten in his room; ignores the calls of her father that wants to have lunch with her; visits the office of her professor Gregory Butler (Charles Aitken), who is married and is having an affair with her; and despises her roommate Lori Spengler (Ruby Modine) that gives a cupcake to her. During the night, Tree goes to a party at the Sigma house but is murdered by a hooded masked man while crossing a tunnel. Out of the blue, Tree wakes up on her birthday day on the bed of Carter and relives the day, when she tries to find who might be the killer.

"Happy Death Day" is a surprisingly good film, with the combination of horror, romantic comedy, mystery and thriller genres. The most important is the humor and Jessica Rothe´s performance is great in the role of the cynical Tree Gelbman. There are jokes also with "Groundhog Day" and teenage slashers and campus movies that work very well. Her list of suspects is hilarious and the dark humor of the alternate ending is a plus of the DVD. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Morte Te Dá Parabéns" ("The Death Gives Happy Birthday")

Note: On 15 April 2023, I saw this film again.

Don't watch it if you are in for a gory slasher, but if you like a bit of suspense with (teenage) humor, you're in the right place. Watched this movie with a smile on my face, but I was still interested int he mysterious side of the movie.

I think people going to see this movie are expecting wayyyy to much from a slasher movie. I'm rating it based on what I expected, and I was certainly impressed. This movie wasn't trying to be anything more than another murder movie, but what made me want to see it was the idea of taking Groundhog Day (which it fully admitted to ripping the idea from) and turning it into a slasher film. I was actually surprised it held back on gore and blood. I was fully expecting it to be all the tropes of gross-out killings, but it was instead focused more on character development and the story. I admit the characters are a bit one-dimensional, but again, it's a slasher movie. It's trying to win any academy awards here. In many ways I think it's parodying those one-dimensional characters of college trope characters and the "last girl" in horror movies because it goes all-in on establishing the main characters as somebody you're meant to hate at first. The ending genuinely took me in a direction I didn't anticipate, and then it took me back to what I was expecting, but did it in a way that I felt fresh. All in all, I had fun watching this movie, which I think what this movie was meant to be: Fun.

Jessica Rothe is amusingly pithy and savvy playing a selfish college beauty, a spoiled sorority sister who rules the school until she is stabbed and killed on her way to a surprise birthday party by a masked lunatic. But fate plays this campus cutie an unusual hand once she discovers she's living her birthday over and over again, each time attempting to cheat death but always running into her attacker. Screenwriter Scott Lobdell isn't trying to sneak a slasher variant of "Groundhog Day" passed us--he's upfront about the similarities, even exalts in them, while toying with all the possibilities such a scenario can offer. It takes Rothe three tries to fully comprehend what's happening to her; once she formulates a plan (creating a suspect list), Lobdell mixes things up, so that the movie rarely feels repetitive. Our heroine, snarky to start, follows Bill Murray's example and becomes a better person on her twisted journey (reestablishing contact with her father, apologizing to her roommate, even causing her own demise on one occasion to prevent the cute nerd from the boys' dorm from losing his life). Director Christopher B. Landon deserves credit for delivering a modern-day thriller with lots of action but no gore and no nudity. If it isn't quite a family-friendly slasher flick, it certainly is a squirrelly, sassy one, with some big laughs counterbalancing the suspense. Good show! *** from ****