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Halloween Day By Day: Happy Death Day (2017)


Birthdays are great.  Dying on them, not so great.  Having to repeat your birthday over and over again?  Hilarious...

It's Theresa's birthday today.  After going to a party, a masked person kills her in a dark tunnel.

It's Theresa's birthday today.  After going to a party, she goes straight home... but a masked person kills her in her bedroom.

It's Theresa's birthday today.  It will always be Theresa's birthday unless she can identify and stop the masked person from kill her again... and again... and again.


"Happy Death Day" is essentially "Groundhog Day" meets "Scream".  A great concept, that is executed extremely well.  The story is surprisingly well developed and engaging, while utilizing the same framework of events over and over again.

The characters to, are well crafted and rounded.  All of them get some depth and growth as the story progresses.  You come to like both Theresa and Carter- the boy whose dorm room she starts her journey in.  Each character is interesting to watch.

This is helped by the acting.  Jessica Rothe as Theresa was great.  She brought humour, seriousness, and depth to the character.  I also liked Israel Broussard as Carter.  He helped to make his character quite likable, and a good balance to Theresa.  Ruby Modine brought a nice, understated performance to her character of Lori, while Rachel Matthews made an excellent "Alpha Bitch" as Danielle.  All in all, a great collection of performances.

There was also some great camerawork and editing that helped to set the mood, pacing, and tension of each scene.

Jay said that "Happy Death Day", "charmed the shit" out of him.  I have to agree.  This is a great little "feel good horror movie" that I'm going to put in "The Good".

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