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Happy Death Day (2017)
I already knew the entire plot, the ending, and the main plot twists, so I decided to watch it purely for ознакомительных purposes – "what's popular with Gen Z these days?" And I ended up being very disappointed. The film feels forced, contrived, and lacks soul. When you watch something like that, you inevitably start noticing even the smallest script errors, and then the bigger ones. The film has a similar premise to "Groundhog Day," including, for example, the protagonist being shown as a bad person at the beginning of the film and at the beginning of the first day, and at a certain point, he lives the day as a good person. I don't really like "Groundhog Day," but you can actually believe in the transformation because we see how Bill Murray lived the day dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, and you can understand how at one point he finally gets tired of aimless hedonism and starts to enjoy self-improvement and helping others. Here, the female protagonist became "good just because..." because the nerd told her she should. No reasons, no transformation, nothing. From an artistic point of view, as I already said, the film lacks soul; everything shown is either scenically cliché or pretends to be scenically cliché, and then suddenly – there's an unexpected twist. And you're supposed to make a soy face and say, "Wow, that's amazing!" But even these "unexpected" moments are so contrived that you can practically see the screenwriter who wrote it thinking, "Damn, this has been done ten thousand times, but let's pretend that this is going to happen, and then it won't actually happen." So, even though there is a formal subversion of expectations, it doesn't actually evoke any emotions (and I'm talking about the ones I didn't know about in advance). At the same time, the film is beautifully shot in terms of the visuals, the actors in the frame, the sets, everything exudes beauty, affluence, a youthful, American, humorous spirit, and the soundtrack complements that feeling.
I would summarize it like this: a visually beautiful wrapper that pretends to contain interesting and unconventional content, but in reality, it all feels secondary and stereotypical, and even the deliberate departure from stereotypes looks... stereotypical.
I already knew the entire plot, the ending, and the main plot twists, so I decided to watch it purely for ознакомительных purposes – "what's popular with Gen Z these days?" And I ended up being very disappointed. The film feels forced, contrived, and lacks soul. When you watch something like that, you inevitably start noticing even the smallest script errors, and then the bigger ones. The film has a similar premise to "Groundhog Day," including, for example, the protagonist being shown as a bad person at the beginning of the film and at the beginning of the first day, and at a certain point, he lives the day as a good person. I don't really like "Groundhog Day," but you can actually believe in the transformation because we see how Bill Murray lived the day dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, and you can understand how at one point he finally gets tired of aimless hedonism and starts to enjoy self-improvement and helping others. Here, the female protagonist became "good just because..." because the nerd told her she should. No reasons, no transformation, nothing. From an artistic point of view, as I already said, the film lacks soul; everything shown is either scenically cliché or pretends to be scenically cliché, and then suddenly – there's an unexpected twist. And you're supposed to make a soy face and say, "Wow, that's amazing!" But even these "unexpected" moments are so contrived that you can practically see the screenwriter who wrote it thinking, "Damn, this has been done ten thousand times, but let's pretend that this is going to happen, and then it won't actually happen." So, even though there is a formal subversion of expectations, it doesn't actually evoke any emotions (and I'm talking about the ones I didn't know about in advance). At the same time, the film is beautifully shot in terms of the visuals, the actors in the frame, the sets, everything exudes beauty, affluence, a youthful, American, humorous spirit, and the soundtrack complements that feeling.
I would summarize it like this: a visually beautiful wrapper that pretends to contain interesting and unconventional content, but in reality, it all feels secondary and stereotypical, and even the deliberate departure from stereotypes looks... stereotypical.
Where do we go?
Where do we end up when we save the world?
Where do we end up when we save the world?