Happy Death Day

Happy Death Day is a combination of a rom-com and a horror movie. The movie features a girl reliving the day she gets murdered (her birthday) over and over again until she finds her killer. The movie is funny and in general just fun to watch. I have watched it twice and even though I already knew who the killer was the second time it was still a very enjoyable movie to watch. It’s definitely a movie you can watch multiple times and still enjoy even without the mystery.


The mystery ‘who did it?’ aspect of this film is really well done. It isn’t super obvious who killed her, mostly because it’s a stupid reason to kill a person. However, it’s so ridiculous that you would never guess it.


Something I was impressed about in this film was its continuity. Nothing is out of place and every time the scene is spot on. On a writer’s note I had two issues, the suspect list that she doesn't have to rewrite each day and the fact that she just relives the same scene too many times. The suspect list she comes up with somehow comes with her for the next few ‘days’. Whereas, everything else resets to the way it was before, so why not the list? Then when it comes to it being the same day over and over again, the most repeated scene is when she wakes up in Carter’s dorm room. Since it’s repeated over and over again throughout the movie I got really sick of this scene.


Another thing I liked about this movie is the use of music. They use ‘confident’ by Demi Lovato in a really funny montage of her as she tries to find out who killed her. They also use music when trying to build suspense or create a change to the atmosphere, and they do this very well.


I like how they explored what you would do if your actions have no consequences for a day. Apparently she would dye her hair bright pink and walk naked through school campus. It kind of makes you think a little more about the circumstances and the fun this might be opposite to the being murdered part of reliving the same day over.


Taking a look at characters, I honestly hated her character, Tree, for a lot of this movie. She is unbearable, rude, and selfish. Her character is hard to root for given her personality. She doesn’t treat anyone with respect and it’s hard to feel bad for her. As the movie goes on and more is revealed about her life, you connect with her. You understand where she is coming from and why she acts the way she does. There are a lot of fun characters in the movie but there are also a lot of very two-dimensional characters that are just kind of there. Although, I don’t think the characters really take too much away from this movie.


If you are an avid horror movie fan this movie could be kind of a let down. It isn’t really horror, it’s not scary or anything. There are maybe two jump scares in the entire movie. You want to go into this movie with the mind set that it’s a thriller rom com. For a person like myself who doesn't like horror movies, this is a movie you can watch that’s not quite a horror movie.


If you enjoy stuff like ‘Scream Queens’ or ‘Scary Movie’ this is a good choice for movie night. ‘Happy Death Day’ is available on Netflix and its sequel ‘Happy Death Day 2 U’ is available on Crave. I found the first one to be better than the sequel. However, the sequel gives an explanation as to why this happened to her and is basically a continuation of the first movie.