Harefooted Halloween: Happy Death Day

What I Liked: The basic concept of being forced to relive one day over and over until you find out the identity of your killer and stop them is good.

What I Didn’t Like: The execution of the concept.

Overall Impressions: The endless time loop idea is so novel and linked to Groundhog Day that it took twenty four years to base another whole movie around it.  And even then they had to do a twist and turn this one into a horror/murder mystery picture.  That was a really great idea.  The problem I have is they made an incredibly cheap dumb horror/murder mystery picture.

The lead character Tree (Jessica Rothe (Forever My Girl)) is really unlikeable.  I guess part of what the filmmakers were going for is to make her such an asshole that you actually want to see her get killed multiple times.  Of course part of her arc is she learns to become a better person and that’s great ‘n all but they made her a dick to the point where it was hard to overcome my dislike of the character.  She treats everyone like crap including her supposed friends, admits to getting someone fired from their job and spitting on an Uber driver ‘n shit.  They could’ve and should’ve scaled that back.

There’s a bunch of unnecessary shit thrown in too like when Tree dyes her hair pink, puts on camo makeup and wears night vision goggles during one loop or when she walks through the campus square naked during another.  What does this add to the movie and how does this help her solve the case?  I don’t get it.

Look, the people that made this thing seemed like they had a lot of fun.  They kept the tone fairly light and tried to goof around with the death scenes to make it entertaining for the audience.  There’s a lot of comedy in this (too much in my opinion) and folks ate it up.  I mean the sequel is already in the can.

This isn’t a good movie though.  It has such a schlock feel that I can’t get past it.  It’s all about the central idea and how remarkably strong it is that makes this watchable.  Everything else around it is terrible.  The deaths aren’t even interesting or crazy which is the least they could’ve done.  But they made that lame too.