“Happy Death Day”

MATT:

MATT SAYS:

The new horror Meister, producer Jason Blum (“The Purge,” “Paranormal Activity”) is back with “Happy Death Day,” an absurdly simple but appealing concept-driven movie.

It’s mean sorority girl Tree Gelbman’s (Jessica Rothe) birthday. Before the day is over, she’s going to be murdered. And then she wakes up, and it’s the morning of the same day. And once again, the killer is going to come for her. And now she has to figure out who it is that’s killing her and stop the murderer before it’s too late. It’s “Edge of Tomorrow” (or “Live, Die, Repeat” depending on who you ask) again, except this time it’s set in the world of slasher films.

Tree makes stupid decisions. As an easy victim-turned final girl, she has time to learn from her mistakes. Not all of her bad choices can be explained away by horror tropes, however, and some plot points are just a little too hard for the audience to swallow, death after death. At times it’s frustrating and there’s not a whole lot to it, but as a horror concept, it works just well enough to warrant a mild recommendation.