Happy Death Day

When Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) wakes in a stranger’s dorm, she hastily departs and sets off about her day like she would any other, save for her walk of shame across the bustling campus. That, and when she arrives at her sorority house, her roommate presents her with a birthday cupcake. But Tree doesn’t care much for carbs, or even kind gestures for that matter. When night falls, she’s stalked by someone who’s dressed as the college’s creepy baby-faced mascot. Before she’s able to get away, she’s stabbed to death. Not a moment later, she wakes in the same stranger’s dorm, recognising everything thereafter from the busy campus to the cupcake. And when night falls, the same maniac shows up and kills her all over again.

It might already be obvious that Tree is trapped – for reasons best left unknown - in a Groundhog Day-style loop (despite her inexplicably having never heard of said-movie), where she’s not only forced to relive the same day over and over again, but also relive (or re-die?) her inescapable death, despite her best efforts to fight back. As the film goes on – or at least as the same day repeats on itself – Tree seeks help from the dorm-stranger, Carter, confiding in him her rather unusual predicament, but with the disadvantage that if she’s yet to die again, she faces the annoyance of having to tell him everything more than once.

Tree has the most effective alarm clock imaginable

The slasher genre has seen two notable eras in cinema. First, there were the true hell-raisers themselves that stalked American suburbia, lakeside cabins, motels and even dreams. Then the mid-nineties saw the ground-breaking and self-referential Scream slash its way into mainstream horror, reinvigorating the genre and carving a path for its own sequels and the likes of I Know What You Did Last Summer. But despite more recent years having seen somewhat failed or at least forgettable attempts at rebooting iconic franchises, while the Child’s Play – or “Chucky” – franchise remains (unfortunately) ever-enduring, it’s reasonable to suggest that the slasher genre has been, for a long time, far deader than any of its undead machete or knife-glove-wielding occupants. No way could a new slasher come along without feeling like a repetition of anything that has gone before. But remarkably, Happy Death Day, despite of course being very repetitive – and for all the right reasons – may be the mark of a slasher renaissance of sorts, or, at the very least, it proves that the subgenre hasn’t run out of new blood.

Perhaps a fairer comparison, though, would be with 2012’s Cabin in the Woods; a film which demonstrated that, by turning a traditional concept – or multiple - on its head, originality is, for the most part, irrelevant and redundant. Happy Death Day doesn’t just offer a refreshing angle on a decades-exhausted subgenre, though – with it being arguable that Groundhog Day indeed started a subgenre of its own with the likes of 2014's Edge of Tomorrow and Netflix’s hugely-underrated The Arq, it seamlessly weaves two together.

Rothe is also superb as the protagonist, who, embodies multiple stereotypes that usually dominate the typical slasher trope: she’s both a bumbling geek and stone-cold, shallow-as-a-puddle sorority sister, at least before her metamorphosis into the strong-willed heroine determined to survive, all the while with Rothe exuding enough charisma to give Bill a run for his Murray. And while originality is absent – or perhaps subjective – there are enough unique elements here from Rothe’s progressively-weakening state from being repeatedly killed, to the film’s whodunit plot, to keep your eyebrows raised.

No sleep between kills: a fate worse than death

More refreshing is the film’s perfect imbalance of humour and horror. Director Christopher Landon, being no stranger to suspense-driven flicks (2007’s Disturbia and 2011’s Paranormal Activity 3) not once asks us to watch through our fingers as Tree is brutalised time and time again, with the violence far more suggestive than it is seen, allowing for suspense and humour as the driving forces behind the film. And while the primary genre’s main purpose is to scare, its subgenre – one of many – the slasher, is at its best when it’s provoking jolts and giggles. After all, without such ingredients, the likes of Scream would never have become one of our favourite scary movies. In short, they’re likely the reason why serious-in-tone reboots from 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street to Rob Zombie’s horrifyingly-bleak Halloween series never quite resonated with audiences. Perhaps that’s why the wise-cracking Chucky lives on, after all. Our love for the slasher, it seems, has evolved from its violence and scares to its irony and humour. 

For my full audio review which was aired on Swindon 105.5, click here.