I’ve mentioned my love of the paradoxical subgenre known as the feel good horror film before; but while there are many great examples of this curious type of film which hopes to jangle your nerves as it warms your heart – surely Christopher Landon is the patron saint of this peculiar brand of movie. Oh, I’m not saying he created the notion of a cheerful slasher, or a life affirming zombie flick, but since he released Happy Death Day back in 2017, he virtually started a flood of similarly themed flicks that deal with mass murder being directly attached to the high concept plots of classic comedies.
To lay Happy Death Day out flat, it’s essentially Scream meets Groundhog Day and it isn’t even trying to hide it – but it turns out that’s precisely the fun of it as it fuses snarky, slasher antics with the notion of a shitty human eventually becoming better through time travelling attrition. So get set to begin again and wish us a very Happy Death Day – stop me if you’ve heard this before…
Sorority trainwreck Tree Gelbman wakes up on the day of her birthday after yet another night of hard-core boozing to find herself in the dormroom of well meaning classmate Carter Davis. Chastising herself for sinking so low, Tree loads herself up with Tylenol, and starts the long walk of shame that awaits her, passing many random people doing oddly specific things – but after exchanging barbs with her exasperated roommate, barely paying attention at a mandatory sorority meeting and nearly getting caught with the professor shes having an affair with, she finds that the surprise birthday party that’s been thrown for her contains one surprise too many when she’s attacked and killed by an assailant in a baby-faced mask.
Fade to black, roll credits, right? Wrong. Somehow, after being killed, Tree once again wakes up in Carter’s bed on the day of her birthday utterly hung over, and after going through the whole day again in some deja vu induced haze, she once again perishes at the hands of the masked killer only to wake up once more with the entire day reset. Pretty soon we realise that Tree’s stuck in a Groundhog Day predicament, cursed to relive the same day over and over only to be murderer at the end and if she’s ever going to break out of this time loop she’s in, she’s going to have to figure out who keeps killing her and why. However, while people in these sorts of scenarios can keep going round forever until they become better people, it soon becomes apparent that all the content deaths are taking a toll on her body and sooner or later, Tree will die once and for all.
Can this boozy, responsibility fleeing, good time sorority girl manage to take responsibility for her own life and solve her own murder via a brutal process of trial and error – or will this mysterious baby faced killer finally topple her for good?
Anyone looking for vicious, gory kills and the type of tension that freezes your sweat as it leaks from your brow will soon find that they’ve knocked on the wrong door pretty quickly while watching Happy Death Day, but much like Landon’s previous, wholesome, comedy horror: The Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, he’s trying way harder to get laughs than he is genuine scares. However, considering that he’s playing in a time-loop sandbox that’s been already perfected by the likes of Harold Ramis, Doug Liman and Duncan Jones, the director impressively manages to find something of an original slant on such a familiar premise. Bizarrely, the slant is basically to throw a bunch of college archetypes who wouldn’t look out of place (personality wise) in Clueless, into an existential, whodunit nightmare that sees their constant deaths as a way to becoming a better person. If it seems twee, that’s because it is and while Landon got to flex his slasher muscles more vigorously with Freaky (slasher meets body swap comedy), the stalking sections play well despite the fact we know that our hero will ultimately respawn.
However, as brilliantly as Landon utilises his mushed together, patchwork concept, there are a few drawbacks that come with playing around with the time loop premice. The first is the inevitable section where out hero has to relive their day for the second time, which always can proven to be slightly draggy as we all know the fun of these flicks don’t really kick in until we’re on the third or fourth time and the reality starts to sink in. Also, despite there being a masked serial killer in the mix, the whole whodunit vibe ultimately feels a little undercooked as the zippy runtime doesn’t really allow for time to examine the suspects (not that there are any).
While this would be something of a worry, two things manage to bolster the film easily past these issues and the first, naturally, is the bouncy, perky tone that Landon manages to sustain even during the kill scenes. A stabbing in a room lit by a disco ball is visually scrumptious and somehow blends well with the typical college high-jinks, smart-alec paradox humour and the numerous montages of Tree living, dying, repeating ad nauseum. However, the real MVP here is the all-in performance of Jessica Rothe who, as the only real fleshed out character here, has to juggle all kinds of moods and yet somehow make it fit into a single role. One minute she’s playing the selfish sorority bitch who doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck about anything other than herself, the next she’s a screaming horror damsel, and then as time progresses she slowly earns our sympathies as she uses her raw charisma to deliver an impressively ego-free journey from repeat victim to a final girl you can be proud of. On top of all that, Rothe also manages to do vulnerable as we find that her more wayward impulses a born from (what else?) the death of her mother; but the fact that she can spin all of these different speeds and fuse them into a single, seamless performance that doesn’t get too saccharine or too silly is something of a miracle.
OK, so maybe the killer reveal and subsequent twists aren’t as epic as the premise, but when you have a script and a lead actor that’s so relentlessly likeable, sometimes a big finish isn’t actually necessary.
Hard-core horror nuts may be initially repelled by the whole niceness factor and the fact that the slasher shenanigans hardly go up to eleven – however, not everything needs to be vicious and cruel, even horror, and if you can make room in your viewing schedule to praise the likes of other, genre bending comedy horror such as Tucker And Dale Vs Evil, you’ve certainly got room for this.
Smart, sweet and yet full of slasher slaughter, Happy Death Day is definitely one to celebrate, again and again and again and again and…
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