Happy Death Day

I'm a bit late with this one. Life got in the way.

Tree isn't a particularly nice person. She has a one night stand with a bloke and ignores him the next day. She blanks people she doesn't want to talk too. She snogs other women's fellas in front of them. She treats her room mate and other sorority sisters like shit. Plus she's nailing a married man. Then she gets murdered. And then somehow wakes up to relive it all again. And again. And again. Annnnnddddd again. Until she's able to figure out who is after her and why.

Groundhog Day was made in 1993. It featured a man caught in a time loop, experiencing the same day over and over again until he does things just right. Source Code in 2011 was pretty similar. 2014's brilliant Edge Of Tomorrow was the same thing again. And now this, Happy Death Day. This time around it's a sort of comedy/slasher film instead of a comedy or Sci-Fi. It's nothing new. It's covering ground that's been done a lot. And you know what? It's not bad. But.....

The joy in these films is watching the protagonist go from being totally bamboozled and helpless to learning from their mistakes and then using their prior knowledge of events to become an expert in avoidance and showing off. This has that in spades. It follows the formula laid down by previous films and does it well. Later in the film as Tree has a handle on things, it's gets very funny indeed. I've seen this film described as Mean Girls meets Halloween by way of Groundhog Day. Not a bad description of it. The comedy side of it is more successful than the horror side though. It was released in the states as a PG13 film. This means its pretty tame stuff. I'm not talking about blood or guts either. It doesn't need that but it would have been good to see it be a bit more intense and a lot scarier but child friendly ratings stop that happening. Still it contains a couple of effective and inventive sequences and later reveals were quite unpredictable.

There's something pretty big that bothered me about this film though and it's something that blighted Groundhog Day for me too. The underlying morality of it all. Tree lives her life the way she wants to. She sleeps around. She drinks too much. She has her eye on people that are taken. Her ways mightn't be to everyones taste but surely its up to her what she does. Had Tree been a bloke would these things have been made a big deal of? She's basically punished for living her life the way she wants to until she becomes a good girl. Sex equals death. Drinking equals death. Partying equals death. It's the same old slasher movie trope that been around since the first Halloween film and probably longer. It's an odd strain of puritanism, one that shows us the fun of it and then the deadly consequences of it. Especially when a woman is involved. Scream ripped the piss out of it 21 years ago and it still hasn't died off annoyingly. 

Jessica Rothe as Tree is good though. Pretty unsympathetic at first but increasingly likable as the film goes on (and yes i realise the irony of this sentence considering the previous paragraph). She has a good gift of comedic timing and a good physicality both of which get used well here. An affable lead goes a long way in a films like this. Solid support from Ruby Modine ( daughter of Matthew), Israel Broussard and Rachel Matthews helps too. All faces who will no doubt be popping up a lot on our screens in the future.

It's fine. An easy going 96 minutes of cinema. A nice alternative to the torture porn of Jigsaw etc. Just don't think about it too deeply.