Birthday Gone Wrong

Students think Final Exam Week is a nightmare. How about having to relive the day you die, repeatedly? Each time the way you die is different from the last. Each time you have to try to figure out who your killer is before he or she can kill you again. That is the nightmarish plot for the movie, Happy Death Day.

The irony of the movie begins with the title. The audience knows that the main character, Tree, will be dying later on in the movie and that it is her birthday. To die repeatedly on your birthday doesn’t make for a great surprise.

The plot holds some similarities to the movie Groundhog Day. Into the ending of the movie, Happy Death Day, Groundhog Day is even brought up as a comparison situation. Phil was a weatherman in the movie Groundhog Day, forced to relive the same day in a small town where all he wanted to do was get away from the town and the people in it. The difference in the two movies lied in the reasons behind the repeated days.

Phil had the chance to fall in love with the female lead by learning different things about her and seeing how she would react to his personality. But with Tree, she must find a way to stop her brutal death each day. She has no idea who her killer is but figures that she needs to kill him before he gets to her.

Neither character in Groundhog Day or Happy Death Day realized why this was happening to them in the beginning. Another similarity lied in the characters’ personalities. They both centered around selfishness and had to change. It only took the Universe focusing on them to do it.

Phil began his experience by doing outrageous things like committing crimes because he knew the day would reset and there would be no consequences. Eventually, Phil became tired of the slight differences he managed to make and began with the suicide attempts. With Tree’s case, she had to fix issues in her personal life. She thought she only had to stay alive but she needed to make amends with several people in her life.

Death Day all in all provides a new take to the slasher-horror genre, combining classic horror themes with a good amount of witty humor as well. It is a movie that even the family can watch together without the vibe getting too cringy. While far from a masterpiece, it is an enjoyable experience.