Movie Review Happy Death Day

Happy Death Day (2017) 

Directed by Christopher Landon

Written by Scott Lobdell 

Starring Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard 

Release Date October 13th, 2017 

Happy Death Day is one of the best surprises of 2017. This seemingly throwaway teen slasher flick turns out to be a sneaky black comedy version of Groundhog Day if Bill Murray were being murdered every day. The film was directed by Christopher Lambert whose résumé is riddled with mediocre screenplays for the Paranormal Activity franchise and whose first feature was the idiotic Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, which leaves me to wonder where he’s been hiding this version of his work?

Happy Death Day stars budding superstar Jessica Rothe as Tree Gelbman, a perky blonde college girl raised on the aesthetics of Mean Girls and Legally Blonde. Her life is lived one party to the next and one partner to the next, until one day she wakes up and finds that the nightmare she had the night before about being murdered by a psycho in a baby mask, was actually real and that she is, for no discernible reason, reliving the day of her death over and over again.

Like Groundhog Day, Happy Death Day doesn’t have much interest in why Tree is stuck in a loop, rather the filmmakers are obsessed with what she does with her repeated days. These break down into several scenarios familiar from Groundhog Day but each with a fun little twist. Tree’s predicament seems like it might be framed for typical slasher fare but instead, the film is infused with a darkly comic, almost slapstick, take on Tree’s predicament in which she constantly tries to anticipate her killer and fails only to wake up comically frustrated by her latest death.

Director Landon crafts a quite clever story that does well to establish a number of potential murderers, among them Tree’s roommate, her sorority rival, a dopey frat guy, a weirdo stalker, Tree’s dad, her love interest Carter (Israel Broussard), and an escaped serial killer. Watching Tree spend some of her days investigating her own death proves to be a good deal of fun, especially her failures in which she is murdered in increasingly unlikely ways.

Find my full length review in the Horror Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Boy Kills World

Boy Kills World (2024) 

Directed by Moritz Mohr 

Written by Tyler Burton Smith, Arend Remmers 

Starring Bill Skarsgard, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Famke Janssen, Sharlto Copley 

Release Date April 26th, 2024

Published April 29th, 2024 

We are at a tipping point when it comes to ultraviolent revenge thrillers. The John Wick movies created a brief and shiny new genre in movies so violent they border on parody. Films with more bullets than words of dialogue became a fashion after Keanu Reeves killed the people who killed his dogs. Naturally, the results have been a copy of a copy ever since. And the diminishing returns are only now becoming clear. Boy Meets World is one of the movies demonstrating that we may have fully tired of the blood and bullets invincible hero genre. 

Boy Kills World stars Bill Skarsgard as the titular Boy. Rescued as a pre-teen from a fascist group of criminals who were in the process of hanging his family, the Boy is raised in the forest by a crazed Shaman (Yayan Ruhian). The Shaman teaches Boy to become a warrior and trains him specifically to kill the Vander Koye Family, the leaders of the fascist government and the people directly responsible for killing Boy's family. Boy especially wants revenge for the killing of his beloved little sister, Mina (Quinn Copeland), who often appears to Boy as an apparition from his own imagination and subconscious. 

After years of training, Boy finally decides to set his revenge in motion. Witnessing a massacre overseen by members of the Vander Koye Family, Glen (Sharlto Copley) and Gideon (Brett Gelman), who bicker like children before directing their top henchwoman, June 27 (Jessica Rothe) to execute anyone resisting them. The Vander Koye's were in the midst of selecting poor people to be executed on live television as part of 'The Culling,' an annual event overseen by the Vander Koye leader, Hilda Vander Koye (Famke Jannssen). Boy especially wants to kill Hilda as she directly oversaw the killing of his family. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media