A horror film for 14 year old girls. It's not particularly scary, it's not as funny as it could be, and it is designed to mock those things that the Queen Bees do in belittling and mocking the other girls. It is so derivative of "Groundhog's Day" that it actually mentions "Groundhog's Day" at the conclusion of the film. There is little to recommend here despite the fun idea of stealing the Bill Murray premise.
From the moment the film starts, the screenplay fills every crevice with suspects. "Tree" our birthday girl, has what appears to be a drunken night with a handsome but apparently socially outcast stranger. Her sorority house is filled with women who might have reasons to hate her, or at least think they do She is having an affair with one of her professors who is a medical doctor, and she meets his wife when they are almost caught in a clinch. She is dodging her Father's birthday call and brunch appointment. Oh yeah, there is also a serial killer who has been caught and is being treated in the hospital, we learn this from a news broadcast in the background.
If the repeated deaths that "Tree" has to endure were a little more creative, this could have been a lot more fun. It is only the automobile sequence that seems to care about providing thrills. The college mascot of the University she attends is "The Babies" which explains the creepy masks in every dorm, frat, office and locker room on campus. The murder sequences and red herrings are standard stuff and it just does not pop out at you the way these movies need to. This is another case of PG-13 undermining the point of the horror film.
The one thing that the film does manage to do is humanize "Tree" the same way that Bill Murray's "Phil" learns a little humility. When the film starts, you are not going to have a lot of sympathy for her, but as it progresses, she starts to recognize the bad choices she has made. She can see the "bitch" in the mirror and she tries to rectify that persona as part of the process of discovering who it is that repeatedly murders her. It';s not a great reason to see the film, but it does give it a little bit of emotional substance.
The rules of the repeating universe she finds herself in are not very clear. The injuries she sustains disappear, except when they don't. In one scenario she kills herself, and that seems odd. Her motivation for that action is partially explained, but why she thinks that solution is better that stopping the whole process is not clear at all. I probably should not worry about inconsistencies in a movie like this, but sometimes those thoughts creep into your head and then the story premise gets undermined. I saw this on Friday, and there was a pretty big crowd, it's so embarrassing to be part of a species that will see this movie but not bother with "Blade Runner 2049".
