Originally written October 27, 2017

Many people are probably familiar with Groundhog Day, the movie where Bill Murray has to live the same day over and over again. In recent years, it feels like there’s starting to become a Groundhog Day sub-genre of movies. Where Groundhog Day explored its concept through comedy, a movie like Edge of Tomorrow explored the concept through the sci-fi action genre. Now, Happy Death Day explores the concept through the mystery horror-thriller genre.

Basically, Happy Death Day is about a college girl that gets murdered at the end of the day. However, then she wakes up to find that the day is starting over again. No matter what she does, she ends up getting murdered by the same masked murderer at the end of the day. The only way for her to make it to tomorrow is to figure out the identity of her killer. It’s a pretty fun take on the Groundhog Day concept, and the movie really utilizes its concept to its potential.

While I consider Happy Death Day to barely be a horror movie, a lot of people are classifying it in that genre. What Happy Death Day gets right more than a lot of modern horror movies is that it focuses on story and characters first. When this isn’t done, a movie can easily lose its desired effect, but since Happy Death Day does this, the results are great. It’s the type of movie where the main character goes through a transformation from beginning to end, actually learning from the events she’s being put through. The movie just had some incredibly good writing, as the characters were solid, and the mystery was intriguing. It’s not like Happy Death Day is one of the best movies of all time or anything, but it’s definitely a fun take on a familiar concept that produces some great results.

4/5