Happy Death Day

[School of Movies 2025]

This is not a Horror movie (or rather, it qualifies enough for that genre in terms of certain expected tropes and elements, but that is not its mode of conduct, and for people expecting conventional Horror, there's a lot more there in its place).

That's what should have been on the poster and promotional artwork, and in the trailers, and threaded through the interviews and general marketing speak surrounding this film. Though doing so might have hurt its 25x multiplier as yet another Blumhouse success story.

That misdirection helped it THEN, in 2017, I'm thinking more about helping it NOW in the 2020s, when viewers who do not like Horror genre movies (in particular cruel slasher movies) would almost certainly steer clear of what is actually one of the freshest, funniest star features in recent years, spotlighting Jessica Rothe, an actress of insane range with serious comedic chops.

It is superficially Groundhog Day with a stalking masked killer, but concerns itself less with the gory specifics of womanslaughter and more with the mechanics of trying to get oneself out of a blackly comic and fatal time-loop, as what is built up around the character of college student Tree Gelbman is a much-needed break in her cycle of self-destruction.

And on our Patreon bonus feed this weekend we have a full-length episode on the 2019 sequel; Happy Death Day 2U which leans even harder into the sci-fi, actively forgetting it was pitched as a slasher (and thus only doing seven times its budget at the box office).

Guest

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast