HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

happy death day (2017) movie

Genre              |   Horror Thriller

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   90 minutes

Released         |   12 October 2017

cast

Jessica Rothe as Tree Gelbman
Israel Broussard as Carter Davis
​Ruby Modine as Lori

director

Christopher Landon

writer

Scott Lobdell

cinematographer

Toby Oliver

music

Bear McCreary

film editor

Gregory Plotkin

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box office result

Worldwide             $125,479,266

Australia                 $​2,725,176

North America       $55,683,845

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the best dialogue

Tree Gelbman: [to Tim] Who takes their date to Subway? Besides, it's not like you have a footlong.

Tree Gelbman: [to her arresting officer] Thank you!

Joseph Tombs: [on her knife] Oh did you bring this for me?

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HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) MOVIE IMAGES

HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) STORY SYNOPSIS

Blumhouse (Split, Get Out, Whiplash) produces an original and inventive rewinding thriller in Happy Death Day, in which a college student (Jessica Rothe, La La Land) relives the day of her murder with both its unexceptional details and terrifying end until she discovers her killer’s identity.  

HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 12 October 2017
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

HAPPY DEATH DAY is one of those movies that you don’t want to think too hard about… To pry too much into the story’s logic could see you quickly tear apart the movie’s plot and forget that the it’s based upon an utterly ridiculous premise. The best way to enjoy what’s going on is to just sit back and let it unfold before you.

The real pleasure of HAPPY DEATH DAY is not it’s attempt to capture the spirit of a 1980s Slasher film...

It’s not the self-aware (SCREAM-like) meta approach the film’s writer, Scott Lobdell, seeks to inject into his screenplay… The real joy is the unearthing of a new “Scream Queen” with Actress Jessica Rothe, whose performance single-handedly lifts HAPPY DEATH DAY from a middle-of-the-road B Horror movie to a real star-making turn that shows a young, versatile across who takes the less-than-Award-acceptance material she’s given and takes it to a place better than anyone could have expected for a movie of this ilk.

The story, such as it is, takes the central idea of Bill Murray’s 1993 movie GROUNDHOG DAY, proving itself to be a seminal work not just for the Comedy genre, where the main character lives the same day over and over. The problem for Rothe’s character, Tree Gelbman, is that she’s repeating the one day where a masked Serial Killer decides to do his worst to the young, beautiful College student.

It’s at this point in the story that HAPPY DEATH DAY takes on a slightly darker tone and becomes more akin to EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014), with Tree subjected to a number of different types of expiration. Much like Tom Cruise suffered at Emily Blunt’s hand in Doug Liman’s 2014 film, Jessica Rothe has numerous run-ins with her killer and realizes, that to escape, she must take clues from each death she endures and apply them next time she wakes up. She’s helped along by Carter, played by Israel Broussard, the young man whose Dorm Room Tree finds herself in at the beginning of the movie!

Director Christopher Landon doesn’t allow the film to get bogged down in replaying scenario-after-scenario, but he certainly uses the story’s middle section to create some nice set-pieces that ramp up the tension but also have some fun with the central concept.

Landon showed that he had a pretty good understanding of how to do “Absurd Horror” with his 2015 movie SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, which featured some gross, but funny on-screen gags. HAPPY DEATH DAY is a different style of movie, but it has similar energy and Landon tasks his actors in this new outing with no shortage of action, stunts and fights to propel the story along.

Despite appearing petite, leading lady Rothe literally throws herself into the set-pieces and helps to sell both the action and the humour with the physicality she brings to Tree’s encounters with her killer. She’s certainly no shrinking violet when it comes to fight scenes!

HAPPY DEATH DAY is not a world beater, but it doesn’t try to be. It’s another micro-budget entry from Blumhouse Productions that takes a concept, packages it as a Horror story and provides viewers with 90-odd minutes of easy entertainment. There’s nothing taxing about it, but it is comforting to know that movie makers such as Christopher Landon, who is showing that he has some appreciation of the diversity in which Horror stories can be told, seems to have found a home under the Jason Blum roof.

Likewise, Jessica Rothe...

​For a young actress to have the chance to showcase the breadth of her versatility in one role is genuine testament to the Blumhouse approach. There’s no doubt every Director, Writer, Producer and Actor want to have the money behind them to support their endeavours. Sadly, not every film can justify a $150 million price tag.

For a fraction of the cost, Jason Blum brings audiences a movie every three or four months, they cost $5 million to produce and make 10-fold their investment. Along the way, viewers are treated to new talent in front and behind the camera and, generally, walk away only a little bit less satisfied than having to sit through a Franchise film that is far more constrained by its commercial obligations than anything Jason Blum and his team bring to the screen.

HAPPY DEATH DAY proves, yet again, there’s a lot to be said for Blum’s formula…

HAPPY DEATH DAY MOVIE (2017) USEFUL LINKS

​Happy Death Day (2017) - IMDb
​Happy Death Day - Wikipedia
​​Happy Death Day (2017) - Rotten Tomatoes

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