Happy Death Day (2017)
- Many of the practical effects used in the climax were achieved without any CGI.
- During the filming of Happy Death Day, Jessica Rothe improvised one of the most famous lines in the movie.
- The incredible score for Happy Death Day was composed in just a few weeks after the original composer dropped out.
Happy Death Day is a 2017 American slasher comedy directed by Christopher Landon. Jessica Rothe stars as Tree Gelbman, a self-absorbed college student who is murdered on her birthday by a masked killer and wakes up to relive the same day repeatedly โ Groundhog Day meets slasher horror. Each time Tree is killed, she restarts the day, and she must use the time loops to identify her murderer while the accumulating deaths take an increasing physical toll on her body.
Jessica Rothe's performance was a revelation โ she transformed Tree from an initially unlikeable mean girl into a genuinely compelling protagonist whose repeated deaths forced her to confront her selfishness, grief over her mother's death, and the relationships she had been sabotaging. The film was smart enough to have fun with the time-loop concept while building a genuine murder mystery whose solution was satisfyingly unexpected. Happy Death Day earned $125 million worldwide on a $4.8 million budget.
