Released for the pre-Halloween period, Happy Death Day has slasher movie elements, but I don’t see it as a straight up horror movie. Tree Gelbman (Jessica Roath) is a selfish college student. After a drunken night out, she awakes the next morning in a boy’s room. She blows him off, and although it is her birthday, she does the same to her room mate and her Dad. On her way to what is going to be her surprise birthday party she is attacked and murdered by a masked killer. At the moment of her death she wakes up in the dorm room again, and finds herself living the same day. She is faced with doing that again and again until she can work out who her killer is.
The first thing that springs to mind when seeing the plot outline is that this is like Groundhog Day. It is, and even one of the characters mentions that film, but it has enough of a twist to it, just like Edge of Tomorrow in 2014, to make it feel fresh enough. Director Christopher Landon, and writer Scott Lobdell have two issues to overcome. Firstly, and this is shared by any film using this plot device, how to keep the scene repetitions interesting.
The film is pacy enough and the differences each day are sufficient to ensure that it never becomes dull. The second potential problem is that, if Tree just wakes up each time she is killed, how can there be any jeopardy? That is partially resolved by having her alive but affected by the injuries she sustained in her death, but that idea seems to be dropped at the film reaches its climax.
What really keeps the film moving, and helped me to enjoy it so much is Roath’s performance. She is both engaging and, as she starts to gain more empathy for the people around her, charming and believable. It is probably the most surprising accomplished performance I have seen in this sort of movie since Mae Whitman in The Duff a couple of years ago.
You could argue that the killer’s motive is a bit flimsy and the identity of the killer a little obvious – especially after one slightly ham fisted clue is shown in the exploding car scene – but I found Happy Death Day to be an unexpected treat.
Rating: 8 out of 10