Trailer
Plot summary
Tree Gelbman wakes hungover in Carter Davis's dorm room on the morning of her birthday and dismisses him before returning to her own room. Her roommate, Lori Spengler, offers her a cupcake. Tree later meets Gregory Butler, her married professor, with whom she is having an affair. At a sorority lunch, she learns about a party that night. Walking alone across campus, Tree hears a music box and sees a figure in a baby mask. The figure chases her and stabs her to death. The same day begins again, with Tree back in Carter's room. The day repeats, and after she avoids the bridge and reaches the party, the masked killer finds her again. Tree is stuck in the loop and sets out to identify who is killing her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Happy Death Day (2017)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The killer's baby mask closely resembled "King Cake Baby", the mascot of the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team, so its creator Johnson Berticelli sued Universal Pictures and Blumhouse for copyright infringement, demanding half the film's profits; a settlement came in 2021.
- Director Christopher Landon chose the killer's baby mask, made by Tony Gardner, over a pig mask after scaring a co-worker with it in the office; the image was in his head while he was expecting his first son.
SPOILER
The scene where Tree pushes Lori out of the window was meant to be shot at the sorority house, but the filming permit had ended before production could shoot there, forcing the location to be changed to a Los Angeles diner.- The trailer used 50 Cent's "In Da Club" as Tree's ringtone, but the film could not afford the track; Landon preferred music supervisor Andrea von Foerster's improvised comedic song "Busy Day Birthday" instead.
- Composer Bear McCreary built the score on two leitmotifs: a pop-flavoured theme for Tree and a killer's theme using distorted vocals by his young daughter, with percussion mostly sampled from college marching band drum lines.
- Writer Scott Lobdell built the story around a slasher trope: he noted such films open with the mean girl killed and the good girl surviving, and wanted to make those two the same person.
