[For The Love Of Franchises] The Happy Death Day films and the Grieving Process

(Content warning: mentions of suicide, death, and loss of loved ones)

Grief is complex. Okay, that might be an oversimplification. Grief tends to be one of the most complex human emotions one can experience. It’s a pathway to sorrow, can lead to anger, sometimes even regret. It's also an emotion that when experienced can be a tool instrumental in healing and moving on. Grief is often explored in horror films. Sometimes as a central theme, other times as a metaphor. The franchise that explores it in one of the most interesting ways though is Universal/Blumhouse’s Happy Death Day.

Happy Death Day released in 2017, and directed by Christopher Landon, is about young college student Tree Gelbman. After being killed by a masked maniac dressed as her school’s mascot, she soon realizes she is caught in a time loop, forced to relive the same day over and over and over again every time she is killed. Using this to her advantage, she sets out to solve the mysterious circumstances surrounding her own murder, but in the process is forced to confront some personal issues and grief that she’s been harboring for a long time.

Tree is your typical college student amplified. She’s a sorority girl with a habit of drinking and partying, going on dates and hooking up. Leading a somewhat shallow existence she trades personal pain for the temporary comfort of alcohol and sleeping around. After extensive partying on her birthday, she wakes up in the dorm room of what she thinks is a one-night stand with no knowledge of how she got there. It’s her birthday, and she decides to go about her day as normal. Brushing off a birthday cupcake from her sorority sister Lori, she goes to visit her professor whom she’s having an affair with despite being married. That night she is lured into a dark tunnel on campus, where she is killed by her baby-faced nemesis for the first time ever leading the day to begin anew.

When one deals with grief time can feel at a standstill, days repeating on end with no way of moving forward. To mirror my own experience, I lost one of my best friends in high school to suicide. He was a constant in my life and we always had each other’s back through thick and thin. Near the end we had grown more distant than I had wanted. When I got the call about what had happened, I was devastated. I found temporary comfort in alcohol and wasting my life away on days that felt repeating on end. I was in my own time loop, a product of my own grief and pain I was feeling. 

As Tree lives out the next few loops getting ever closer to solving her own death, she starts to have revelations about her own personality. She eventually opens up to Carter, her would be one night stand. She comes to certain realizations about her own self-doubt and depression, eventually revealing that she has a strained relationship with her father ever since the death of her mother three years prior. Grieving about the loss and unsure how to deal with it, Tree is implied to have undergone an entire personality change to the Tree that we meet at the beginning of the film. With the knowledge of her own murder and the acceptance of the predicament in her life she sets out to make things right.

Convinced that escaped murderer John Tombs is her killer, Tree goes about her day as a renewed person. She breaks up with her professor and reconciles with her dad. Realizing the relationship, she has with her surviving parent is something that’s important to her, promising to mend the bond that they once had. After she and Carter kill Tombs, she celebrates with him by finally eating the cupcake she accepted from Lori. 

When grieving, it's important to remember and cherish the bonds of those in your life. To strengthen those bonds is to help heal the hole left in your life by those departed. When I was grieving my friend, I lost sight of that, and my friendships and relationships started to decay. I cut myself off from everyone and crawled into a metaphorical hole to deal with problems that were far out of my league. When I started to surround myself with those I loved, I began to realize the love they had to offer was the best cure for the pain I felt after a major unexpected loss.

Tree wakes up the next day realizing she died in her sleep and concludes that her birthday cupcake from Lori was poisoned and that she's the true culprit of her murder. Confronting her she learns that she was in an affair with the professor but his preference to Tree caused her to start to hate her friend and plan her murder. After a final showdown she spends the night in Carter’s room where the film began, and the loop finally being broken.

Or was it?

Happy Death Day 2U, released in 2019, expands on ideas laid down by the first film in many ways people wouldn’t expect. Sure, it expands on why Tree was caught in a time loop in the first place, but also expands on Tree’s grief and struggles to move on from her mother’s death in more meaningful ways.

Tree learns that Carter’s roommate Ryan was working on an experimental quantum reactor that's unexpectedly causing time loops. Ryan himself is caught in one now and Tree agrees to investigate how to get him out of it. When an explosion goes off, Tree wakes up in an alternate version of the world she knows. One where she and Carter aren’t together, and her mother is alive and breathing. Conflicted, she contemplates staying in this reality despite it not being the world she knows. Eventually Ryan and his friends discover how to close all the loops and Tree is forced to make a decision of what reality she will stay in but not before Carter tries to convince Tree to go back to her own reality and letting her know her pain is what makes her who she is.

That’s where things really begin to click in my mind about the Happy Death Day films and in particular 2U. Your grief and pain you’ve suffered in life, though it may be hard at the time, helps sculpt you into the person you are today. Bringing the person back won’t make everything the way it was before. Tree had to deal with that loss and pain of losing her mother and in turn was forced to confront the awful actions she had committed and the person she had become. As a result, she thought she became a better and stronger person because of it. Taking that away removes all the evolving she did. When I was forced to confront who I was becoming, it was eye-opening. Bringing back my friend wouldn't heal my pain, I had already healed that pain myself through my grief and became stronger on the other side of it. Having experienced all the pain and loss, I’m more well equipped to confront it in the future when it unavoidably happens in my life again.

Knowing she can’t remain in this reality; Tree has a tearful final goodbye to her mother. The perfect closure. After a series of events the reactor activates and she’s sent back to her own reality, with one chapter of her life over and another ready to begin.

The Happy Death Day films exist in a unique position in the slasher genre. On the surface they are rip-roaring horror comedies that are insanely fun and clever. Beneath the surface though they feature an interesting cycle of grief through the eyes of its main protagonist. From self-loathing destructive actions to being forced to confront them. From letting relationships decay to reforging stronger connections to loved ones. From confronting ultimate wish fulfillment to embracing the pain you've experienced and wearing it as a badge of strength. With recent news of a third installment in development, Happy Death Day is not only a franchise I urge horror fans to check out but anyone who has experienced the pain of grief and come out stronger on the other side. 

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