Happy Death Day is a comedic slasher film that somewhat surpasses expectations and ends up being reasonably entertaining in spite of the absurd plot. Scott Lobdell is the screen writer with Christopher Landon directing the fil. The film’s stars include Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, and Rachel Matthews.
College student Tree Gelbman awakens on her birthday after a wild party night. She properly meets the young man she ended up leaving with and staggers out onto the campus. She gets on with her day as best she can and gets murdered later that evening. Then, she wakes up again in the same dorm room on the same day and keeps meeting a tragic and frightening end. Tree is in a time loop and has to use the repeated deaths as a means to figure out the identity of her assailant.
The plot is rather ridiculous, but there was an attempt to give the lead character some depth. Rothe does show some skill in acting the more comedic moments. The main character is grieving the loss of her mother and has a rather strained relationship with her father. In spite of the efforts to spoof the slasher genre, there were some interesting character moments. The cast is made up of actors who are not that well-known, but they were well chosen. Rothe, in particular, seems to be a solid casting decision.
There was also some effort to have some creative twists in the plot as well. I was left uncertain as to who the real culprit would turn out to be.
The film is by no means that great, but it’s surprisingly better than one would expect. A lot of basic elements worked pretty well and sort of helped blunt the basic stupidity of the plot.
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