It's Tree's Birthday (Jessica Rothe) and she wakes up in the dorm room of an unfamiliar geek (Israel Broussard), hung over, and late for class. She lives on a vast college campus, is caddy with several of her sorority sisters, and has a surprise party planned later in the evening. Oh, and by the end of the night, she'll be murdered.
Now comes the Groundhog Day element, in which Tree awakens in the same dorm immediately after being murdered by a masked assailant. Same geek, same girls, same day. It takes Tree a couple days to work out what's going on: she's trapped in the same day over and over... The catch is that no matter what she does or how much she changes her day, she is destined to be killed by this unknown killer. Finally after much frustrations, Tree admits what's happening to the geek, named Carter, and he eventually begins to believe her. His plan? Make a list of every person who might dislike her and work to unmask the killer. If you catch the killer and survive the day, maybe you can make it to tomorrow. Great.
The film doesn't take itself too seriously, and in fact I would argue this is a comedy before it is a "horror/thriller." Tree's journey of self-discovery is a surprisingly effective one, and we have fun with her along the way. Yes, every 5 or 10 minutes she is killed, but I was rarely scared by this person wearing a baby mask. Nor was I overly eager to find out who the killer was. Who cares? Like Groundhog's Day, the movie enjoys visual humor and some funny scenarios that would likely happen if you were able to repeat the same day over again.
And then Tree sees on the television that an escaped killer has been hospitalized, and she is surprised she hadn't seen that on the news until now. "He must be my killer." And guess what, he basically is. This is not a spoiler per-se, because the film is far from over at this point. I'll be the first to admit that the last third of the film kind of falls apart, loses steam, takes the easy way out, however you want to put it. Even when we think she has solved the mystery, what do you know - the day keeps repeating. I heard in an early screening of the film that they intended to allow the day to repeat forever, and that preview audiences groaned as though having been betrayed. I don't blame them. Even this film, with its happy ending, takes so long to get there that I began to feel cheated... Perhaps I was stuck in a film that would never find a satisfying conclusion?
For all it's worth, the film works. It's a fun thrill ride and a light taste of the Halloween spirit for those who aren't necessarily thrilled with gore/torture porn flicks. The final reveal of the killer might leave you asking more questions than you want to think about, but in the end you have to dismiss this movie as one of those "shut your brains off" when you're watching it. I suspect a repeated viewing of this film might render it dumber than my first reaction might have thought. And that's okay. We aren't aiming for the stars here.
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