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Movie Review: Happy Death Day

I know I mentioned that the review for "Mother!" would be today, but since that movie is so...intense, I need a weekend to get my words composed.  So in the meantime, I'm giving you a review of Happy Death Day.

Also, I know there is a lot of horror movie reviews in a row, but as January is my birthday month, it's easier to....coax? gently force? people into watching scary movies with me.  There will be a lull in scary movie reviews after my birthday. Okay. On to the review. Spoilers ahead.






Plot Summary: Theresa "Tree" wakes up in the dorm room of a classmate named Carter after a drunken binge the night before.  It happens to be her birthday.  She goes through her normal college day, being rude and dismissive to those she encounters. She keeps ignoring her father's calls, throws the cupcake her room mate makes her into the trash, and is having an affair with one of her professors. That night, on her way to a party she is lured into a tunnel where she is murdered by a person in a campus mascot mask.

Theresa "Tree" wakes up in the dorm room of a classmate named Carter after a drunken binge the night before.  It happens to be her birthday....again. The events of the day repeat, and she seems unnerved, thinking the previous days activities was just a bad dream.  Even still, she avoids the tunnel and goes to the party. However, while hooking up with a fellow classmate the masked mystery person kills him and then goes on to kill Tree.

This kickstarts another loop. Instead of going to the party, she stays in her room, barricading the doors and windows, but is killed in her bathroom.

On the next loop, she confides in Carter who suggests that she take advantage of the loop in order to figure out who her murderer is.  This starts a montage of murders.  While she is crossing people off her list, she doesn't seem to be getting any closer to an answer. That is, until she realizes that there is a known serial killer being held at the local hospital, she concludes that he must be killer. She makes the decision to go after the serial killer by trying to kill him in the hospital, but it doesn't go according to plan. They fight, and Carter, who followed Tree to the hospital, tries to help her but he gets himself killed.  Knowing that if she kills the serial killer and ends the loop, that Carter won't come back, she decides to end the loop by killing herself.

In the meantime she is also finding out that she is retaining damage from all of her previous murders.  On another loop she confides in Carter yet again.  She says that she doesn't like the person that she's become.  Ever since her mother died (on her birthday, which happens to be a shared birthday they had together) she's been angry and mean. She spends the next loop righting all of her wrongs. That night, she goes back to the hospital and kills the serial killer and celebrates by eating the cupcake that her roommate made her.

However, when she wakes up in yet another loop, she's confused. She returns to her room and packs her things to run away.  When her roommate offers her the cupcake, she realizes that last night she died in her sleep.  After she ate the cupcake. This is when it is revealed that her roommate was the killer all along, and the cupcake was poisonous . The reason? She was jealous that Tree's professor chose Tree over her.

Tree shoves the cupcake in her roommates mouth and pushes her out the window.

My thoughts: I love these kind of campy, ditzy girl kind of horror movies. They are reminiscent of my childhood in the 90s where I would read Christopher Pike and watch those 90s horror films like "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (Which is also a book), Scream, or the Friday the 13th movies.  It also reminded me of the TV show, "Scream Queens" which I also loved because it made me feel nostalgic. I'll go into this whole thing in another post.

I love this genre because I love the juxtoposition between campy humor and fear.  This movie had some jump scares and some uncomfortable and tense moments. While it isn't a nightmare inducing film, it is still a horror film. And I don't know if I'm just...not the brightest bulb, but I did NOT see the thing with the roommate coming.  I was so confused about the serial killer. How did he know where she lived? Why her? It can't just be a random serial killer murder! But it wasn't, turned out it was jealousy over a guy.

Not the deepest meaning.

I also kinda liked Tree's arc.  Admittedly I didn't care AT ALL that Tree was being murdered over and over again. But I was glad to see that she did right all of her wrongs that made her terrible.

I also really liked Carter's character.  He plays the "good guy" friend, and I am a sucker for the sweet guy character.  It's not original, and admittedly that was all he was, but I still loved it.  And I was glad that they were together in the end.

Overall, Happy Death Day is a spoopy fun romp for everyone.

Until next time

Memento Mori.
&;




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