“Mean Girls” meets the purge, again and again

“Happy Death Day,” a movie released on Oct. 13 (yes, Friday the 13th), feels like a dozen of movies squished into one. It’s sort of “Groundhog Day,”  “Mean Girls,” “The Shining,” and “The Purge” rolled together. The excessive repetition of the main character being killed over and over makes the short, 90-minute film feel like hours.

Tree, who is played by Jessica Rothe (one of Emma Stone’s roommates in “La La Land”) is brutally murdered over a dozen times. She wakes up in a guy’s dorm room after each fatality, then tries to piece together who might have the motive to kill her. Problem is, everyone has that motive.

Tree, short for Teresa, is the classic “mean girl” who fits perfectly in a stereotypical college sorority. The film includes: (a) the stuck-up sorority queen bee who is always on the back of the main character; (b) the cute “nerd” who for some reason sees past bad attitudes; (c) the excessively drunk college students who never seem to be doing anything educationally related; and (d) the drink-dumping-over-the-head scene that’s in almost every “standing up to the bully” movie.

The perpetrator’s signature disguise is a baby mask that looks like a reject costume from the “Purge” movies, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Although you’ve kind of seen this movie in several different versions already, it is worth seeing, but maybe at home instead of in a theater. It has a mixture of classic murder touches, such as being stabbed in a parking garage, but it also has much more creative attacks, including “death by bong.”

The movie has four or five pretty good jump scares, but they aren’t anything compared to recent movies like “Lights Out” or “Don’t Breathe.”

“Happy Death Day” will keep you guessing who’s trying to kill the main character, and you really will be surprised to discover who it is. Unfortunately it doesn’t all add up, as the killer’s motives aren’t very “death worthy” to begin with. But, if you can look past that, it’s a pretty good shocker.

What’s nice about this movie (although, a little cliché) is that Tree has a pretty upsetting background that explains why she isn’t the nicest person to be around. It’s good to see why the bully became the bully. The movie seems to have an underlying message besides “don’t be mean.” Whether it was intended or not, it shows the merit in being a better person.

Overall, “Happy Death Day” is a decent movie. It may not ever be featured in your DVD collection, but it’s still worth watching.

Advocate Staff