The film Happy Death Day is a thriller, horror picture starring Jessica Rothe as an arrogant, cold sorority girl named Theresa. The plot of the film is simple: Theresa finds herself continuously waking up on her birthday after nightmares of being killed by a masked assailant. By the second or third time she wakes up on a Monday in the room of a man named Carter (played by Israel Broussard ), she realizes she has died. She is doomed to suffer several more deaths on her birthday until she finds and kills her assailant.
As a horror movie fan, I do not believe this film is anywhere close to classics such as Halloween, but it far exceeded my expectations. The main reason was the excellent characterization of the lead, Theresa.
Theresa started off as a very unsympathetic character. She sleeps with her married professor. She treats Carter callously after assuming their drunken one-night stand despite his kindness. (It is revealed he took her into his room out of fear she would choke on her own vomit.) Theresa throws out the cupcake her roommate baked for her birthday and she ignores her father’s calls. Overall, she is a stereotypical, mean-spirited and selfish sorority girl. However, as she keeps dying, Theresa slowly becomes a better, empathetic person. She is more willing to be herself and not what her sorority wants her to be. She takes risks after learning life is too short to be living a façade for someone else. Furthermore, she realizes Carter is her only true friend throughout her ordeal and that the life she has been living is not one her or her mother would be proud of.
Ultimately, it was the character arc, along with Theresa’s tenacity and resourcefulness in the face of death, that prevented this movie from being another cheap, slasher film about a shallow college girl. Carter’s loyalty to her, despite her previous rejection, provides a valuable lesson. The audience is reminded to not quickly dismiss people. It is often the person who we ignore and mistreat the most who is invested in us, not those who give attention for self-interest.
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