I really wanted this to be better than it was. I guess that’s almost always true, but in particular I was rooting for this one. Oh well…
Modeling your film’s premise off of one of the most beloved and successful movies of all time can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, everybody immediately gets the concept of “Groundhog Day but for horror”. When I first heard about Happy Death Day, I made a mental note to seek it out, not based on what I saw in the advertising but just because that sounded like a cool concept. The trouble is, once you attract your audience, they are all going to have the original version in their mind. Even with tempered expectations, the comparison is not flattering.
The best thing I can say about Happy Death Day is that it’s breezy. Everyone gives likeable enough performances, and I was never bored while watching it. The problems are many, however. First and foremost, this is a horror/comedy that is neither scary nor funny. Given how many times we type similar sentiments in these reviews, you might wonder if horror/comedy is ever a viable combination, but rest assured, I aim to tackle the most successful version of that hybrid for my final movie of the season. What I found most egregious was the way that Jessica Rothe’s charcter follows the same personal growth narrative that Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day, but that journey is never really portrayed on screen. It’s as if the film expects us to be familiar with that story, and invites us to fill in the blanks so it doesn’t have to work as hard. It’s like how the movie Spooky Buddies lazily has all the same plot beats as the far superior Hocus Pocus. That’s a reference everybody is bound to get, right? Oh, you don’t all have children aged 2-8? My bad.
Look, it isn’t reasonable to expect a silly teen slasher to have the same level of craft as a great movie like Groundhog Day. So what could Happy Death Day have done to be more successful? In my mind, the filmmakers missed a golden opportunity to really get creative with the kills. Here you have your main character be murdered over and over again by necessity of the plot, and she’s always just getting stabbed or something. Groundhog Day wasn’t even about Bill Murray dying, and it still found far more interesting ways for him to kick the bucket in the three-minute sequence that focused on that. I get that they were tethered to the lucrative yet stifling PG-13 rating, but even absent gore they could have easily stepped up their game. Also, the central mystery of who wants to kill her is pretty limp as well. They throw out a few lame red herrings, and then Rothe makes a hurculean deductive leap in order to solve it in the end. I get that Happy Death Day made a load of money, and a sequel has already been greenlit, and its even fairly well liked by critics (70% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). Even if I’m in the minority, though, I question how much of that good will came from the films own merits, and how much is just leftover nostalgia for being reminded of a much better movie.
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