Film Review: No New Frights in Store for ‘Happy Death Day’

CHICAGO – “Happy Death Day” has a “Groundhog Day” gimmick, but that’s about it, offering essentially an ‘80’s style slasher flick with the hope that with a little cosmetic window dressing will help it appeal to an audience in 2017… Live, Die, Repeat. That’s all this film offers with precious few improvements to justify its existence.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

The story, such as it is, involves a self obsessed sorority sister named Tree (Jessica Rothe). She acts the way sorority sisters always do in movies like this, meaning she’s a bitch with a capital B, mean to her roommate, sleeps with her married professor, rude to her own father, and seems to live her life aiming for “Mean Girls” type perfection. She begins the day waking up in the dorm room of a college boy (Israel Broussard) she met after a few too many drinks the night before, and ends her day being brutally murdered by someone in a plastic baby mask. It also just happens to be her birthday, so there’s a stereotypical college house party thrown in, and some of the most awkward “dancing” in a slasher movie since Crispin Glover cut a rug in “Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter.”

Jessica Rothe isn’t quite the final girl you’d expect to build a whole movie around. She’s pretty and blandly charismatic, but she’s more likely to be an early victim in a slasher movie like this, and not the one you’d expect the audience to root for. In the beginning she’s so bitchy to everybody the audience may actually be rooting for her killer.

”Happy Death Day” opens everywhere on October 13th. Featuring Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken and Laura Clifton. Written by Scott Lobdell. Directed by Christopher Landon. Rated “PG-13”