Happy Death Day

This is bad. This is so bad. This is really bad. It was all a dream guys! It was all a stupid, inconsistent and ill-conceived dream that makes no sense in the context of the film and out of it. No good film has ever ended it  as all a dream. In Nollywood, Bollywood or any other of the Woods.

The plot synopsis seems straight forward albeit suspiciously ambitious for a Nollywood movie. A group of friends accidentally kill their friend on his birthday and rush to hide it from the birthday party-goers. A bit ambitious but I thought if done well, it would be really good. It got off to a good start, the characters had good chemistry, it starts with an arresting scene, and it is tense. Then from the moment that the doctor shakes his head to show that the boy is in a coma, it just loses it and never recovers. There is a litany of the things wrong with the story: a doctor is so unprofessional that he doesn’t tell the characters that their friend is in a coma; a hospital doesn’t have IVs or any other medical equipment; the nurse at the reception seems to be the only nurse in the whole hospital; multiple people hold Alex Ekubo and cannot hear or feel his heartbeat at all; suddenly the one in a coma starts narrating and speaking to the character without explanation or reason; this and many more which serve to make it very inconsistent and very contrived. The characters act without any reason and only to move the unreasonable plot forward. It is padded with flashbacks and long dialogue, this film was so long. It just kept dragging it out to get to an incomprehensible end. The swim party scenes were a fail, why should we care about these people’s drama?

Acting wise, I feel they did a great disservice by putting their one of their best actor in a coma. Alexx Ekubo provides narration and is barely in it. The others barring James Gardiner and the drug guy are not up to standard. The guests at the party were BAD. Cringeworthy.

The production value was so good, which makes it even worse. There were creative shots, the cinematography came from someone who knew what they were doing. The scoring and soundtrack was good, especially in tense scenes( scene-just one scene). The directing on the other hand was poor; the fight scenes were so unrealistic. Ditto for the sex scene. The time of day changed from day to night to day again.

In conclusion, it is quite clear that this movie made me angry. You know in dreams, things don’t always make sense. This movie accidentally mirrored that. If the incomprehensibility and the contrivance was only limited to the dream, I may have excused it. But no, it was the whole film. This is the stupidest film I have ever watched. And I’ve watched Bob Manuel have sex with a corpse and bring it back to life.