Happy Death Day Repetitive but Interesting

By Lizbeth Cuellar | Big Stick Editor |

* Contains spoilers *

Imagine waking up and reliving the same day over and over again, but with a plot twist, it was your birthday.

Happy Death Day (directed by Christopher B. Landon) released on Oct. 13 tells the story of Theresa Gelbman (played by Jessica Rothe) who wakes up after a night of partying in the boys dormitory. The audience shortly finds out that it is her birthday and she really doesn’t seem to care about it or anyone besides herself and the shallow sorority she is a part of in college. Later that same day Gelbman is headed towards a party at night before she is stalked  down and knifed by a mysterious person in the school’s mascot mask. She later wakes up in the same room from a fellow classmate and believes it was all dreamed.

After going through the same scenarios, Theresa decides to live each day again and change something about it. Whether it be being nice to a person or get to do the things she has never done and let go of her self little by little. It isn’t until each time she dies by a stab to her body where Theresa soon finds out that it is causing her internal pain inside of her organs. Because of that she should be dead and decides to put an end to it by catching and killing the person who has been killing her. With the help of Carter (the guy who’s room dorm she has been waking up in, played by actor Israel Broussard) they both set out a plan on how to take down the killer. One night at a diner, Theresa watches the news from the displayed television and is alerted when a serial killer has been moved to the medical station in her college campus and is convinced he has been chasing her  down all this time.

When confronting the Tombs (the supposed killer) he gets a hold of Carter and snaps his neck, Theresa realizes that if she kills him now Carter won’t be alive when everything is over. Now knowing what she has to do she stabs herself one last time in order to have Carter back at her side. The next night she goes back to the hospital and has succes with killing Tombs and believe everything has ended. She and Carter go back to her dorm room and she eats a birthday cupcake her roommate (Lori) had made for Theresa’s birthday early of each day before any events had taken place. Just when you think the movie is over and everything is solved, she wakes up again in Carter’s room on the day of her birthday with him not knowing who she is or remembering anything from the past events. Theresa in a panic, rushes back to her room and comes to the term that she has never eaten the cupcake left for her on previous days until last night.

She actually dies in her sleep and soon puts the pieces together that her own roommate killed her by poisoning the cupcake and used Tombs to cover her tracks since she had easy access to him. Breaking out into a fight, Theresa manages to throw Lori out the window sending her into her death by falling out of the two-story sorority house. Lori’s actions were caused by Theresa always being a bad roommate to her and caring only about herself instead of the true picture of friendship. Now with the constant loops of repeating days are over, Carter and Theresa are in a relationship and the main character learns that by reliving each day, a person finds out who they really are.

Happy Death Day was a great movie to watch with friends and it absolutely kept you at the edge of your seat to know what occurs next. Even though it was repetitive in some moments, it gave the viewer a chance to predict who the killer might be.