Toasty just wrote a review for the sequel which I'm now really keen on seeing. It actually was the advertising for the sequel that spurred my interest in this series. The trailers looked tremendously entertaining, to the point I was ready to go into seeing the sequel cold. Conversely, the trailers for this first entry made the film look so generic, like 90% of all the big screen horror movie trailers put out there. It really emphasized how brutally cliche the film's college kids are (but doesn't really get across that they're comedically cliche). Plus "In Da Club"? Really? That's the song you're going with. It's a wonder this was a success at all that it could spawn a sequel.
We've had a few different takes now on the live-die-repeat time/life loop in movies (Groundhog Day [obviously], Edge Of Tomorrow, Arq, among others) and TV (Russian Doll, recent episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and Legends of Tomorrow, among others) and quite frankly most (if not all) have been tremendously fun. But what Happy Death Day has that others do not is Jessica Rothe. How is she not a much bigger star already? Is the initial (and mistaken) impression I had of this film - that of being a schlocky also-ran in the endless, tedious parade of modern slasher flicks - keeping the powers that be in filmmaking away from this film, being unexposed to this incredible talent thus casting her in...well, anything. Come on people! At the very least she should be paired up in a sister comedy with Anna Faris. Make it happen!!
As noted, the sequel was marketed so much better (and yet fared poorly at the box office comparatively). As Toasty wrote, it's sold as more of a sci-fi/time travel comedy. I was very surprised by this since the marketing had this pegged as tedious final girl serial killer pablum when it's actually a witty dark comedy that has only the slightest of horror elements imbued. As far as these kinds of things go, it's pretty tame, a PG-13 styled thriller (but seriously, it's a comedy) with no real gore and most of the kills happen with a cutaway back to Tree (Rothe) waking up on her birthday again. Perhaps it was this bait-and-switch that kept the ticket buyers of the first one away from the second one? Is it possible that the duplicitous shaping of the film into a straightforward horror movie is what drew the teen horror audiences in, and subsequently disappointed them (rather than surprised them) with lack of bloody payoffs? Perhaps the desires of this middle-aged man, to be entertained with clever plotting, genre twists and delightful acting, are much different than the desires of the youthful slasher-going crowd who want nothing more to be titillated by blood and gore rather than cerebral delights and charming performances.
I don't know what it is about this story-now-genre of complicated (or awful) people living a single day over and over again only to become a better person ... I love it very very much and am here for it over and over again. It's a superficial character growth movie almost exactly in the vein of Groundhog Day, not nearly as resonant or deep as Russian Doll (philosophic ponderings here are pretty much non-existant), but Rothe keeps the attention on her at all times, and her performance has a lived-in feel. Tree is emotionally distant from pretty much everyone at the start, making her way through life in a relative fugue state, not connecting to the guys she's dated, her sorority sisters or even her roommate who clearly makes an effort to be a friend. She not stuck up, or pompous, there's clearly something deeper to her disaffection and that does come out, and she does achieve self-awareness. But unlike Groundhog Day, that's not the end goal. Instead, she needs to figure out who keeps killing her. It doesn't have a metaphysical karmic purpose, and I was hoping for some minor left field explanation like her father or mother was a quantum physicist or something that might tease why Tree is having this episode, but it doesn't really matter when it's all so much fun, right?
I need to watch that sequel immediately.
We've had a few different takes now on the live-die-repeat time/life loop in movies (Groundhog Day [obviously], Edge Of Tomorrow, Arq, among others) and TV (Russian Doll, recent episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and Legends of Tomorrow, among others) and quite frankly most (if not all) have been tremendously fun. But what Happy Death Day has that others do not is Jessica Rothe. How is she not a much bigger star already? Is the initial (and mistaken) impression I had of this film - that of being a schlocky also-ran in the endless, tedious parade of modern slasher flicks - keeping the powers that be in filmmaking away from this film, being unexposed to this incredible talent thus casting her in...well, anything. Come on people! At the very least she should be paired up in a sister comedy with Anna Faris. Make it happen!!
As noted, the sequel was marketed so much better (and yet fared poorly at the box office comparatively). As Toasty wrote, it's sold as more of a sci-fi/time travel comedy. I was very surprised by this since the marketing had this pegged as tedious final girl serial killer pablum when it's actually a witty dark comedy that has only the slightest of horror elements imbued. As far as these kinds of things go, it's pretty tame, a PG-13 styled thriller (but seriously, it's a comedy) with no real gore and most of the kills happen with a cutaway back to Tree (Rothe) waking up on her birthday again. Perhaps it was this bait-and-switch that kept the ticket buyers of the first one away from the second one? Is it possible that the duplicitous shaping of the film into a straightforward horror movie is what drew the teen horror audiences in, and subsequently disappointed them (rather than surprised them) with lack of bloody payoffs? Perhaps the desires of this middle-aged man, to be entertained with clever plotting, genre twists and delightful acting, are much different than the desires of the youthful slasher-going crowd who want nothing more to be titillated by blood and gore rather than cerebral delights and charming performances.
I don't know what it is about this story-now-genre of complicated (or awful) people living a single day over and over again only to become a better person ... I love it very very much and am here for it over and over again. It's a superficial character growth movie almost exactly in the vein of Groundhog Day, not nearly as resonant or deep as Russian Doll (philosophic ponderings here are pretty much non-existant), but Rothe keeps the attention on her at all times, and her performance has a lived-in feel. Tree is emotionally distant from pretty much everyone at the start, making her way through life in a relative fugue state, not connecting to the guys she's dated, her sorority sisters or even her roommate who clearly makes an effort to be a friend. She not stuck up, or pompous, there's clearly something deeper to her disaffection and that does come out, and she does achieve self-awareness. But unlike Groundhog Day, that's not the end goal. Instead, she needs to figure out who keeps killing her. It doesn't have a metaphysical karmic purpose, and I was hoping for some minor left field explanation like her father or mother was a quantum physicist or something that might tease why Tree is having this episode, but it doesn't really matter when it's all so much fun, right?
I need to watch that sequel immediately.
And now I have go do a ReWatch of the original so I can post it. I still have no idea why I didn't post prior as it would have at least fit into the genre for the Days of Halloween. I loved that you liked it, and yes I am right there with you for Rothe -- she was spectacular.
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