'Happy Death Day' A Review

Happy Death Day is a horror/comedy about college student Tree(Jessica Rothe) who wakes up on her relatively innocuous birthday only to be murdered by a masked and black clad figure. She then wakes up and repeats the same day only to be killed again. Rinse and repeat until Tree decides to figure out who the murderer is and beat them to the killing ground.

Rothe anchors the film with a great balance of fear, humor, and pragmatism all kind of amped up by  her natural and significant charisma. The dork Rothe's character continually wakes up next to who eventually becomes her love interest is Carter played by Israel Broussard who also has an easy charm which, although lacking much if any depth, is fun and the chemistry between them is natural and engaging. The rest of the cast are all serviceable and funny, at the same time playing college slasher movie cliches as well as sending them up.

The conceit we've seen before, Groundhog Day is even called out by name at one point, but it doesn't particularly matter the device works and its well executed here. There is no real narrative surprise, a conventional slasher flick with effective humor in the vein of Scream, and it doesn't contain any cinematic complexity or richness, the visual style could be described, without judgement, as proficient. However the movie is fun and funny and entertaining. Without pretension and with an engaging cast propelled by the inherent momentum of the redo mechanism it works. Maybe not on the big screen but certainly on the small.

Rent It.