Happy Death Day– Take the movie Groundhog Day, set it on a college campus, and add a murderer and you have this fun movie. Tree Glebman wakes up in a boy’s dorm room on her birthday. She goes through the day and is murdered by someone wearing all black and the mask of the school mascot. On her death, she wakes up back in the boy’s dorm room and lives through the same day until she can stop her murderer. A pretty clever movie, enough is done to keep you guessing on who the murderer is and Tree is a smart character. She works to widdle down her suspect list and naturally finds out clues and picks up on things that are wrong. My guess is that this script was worked on for a while, it’s way more clever than I thought it would be. Rated PG-13, this movie is light on violence and almost absent of gore. The most you see is a knife handle sticking out of someone. More thriller than a horror movie, this is a good movie for scaredy-cats (it’s not scary at all) to watch with their friends who like horror movies.

Happy Death Day 2U– The sequel starts on the same morning as the original. Ryan, the roommate of Carter, opens this movie by showing the audience where he goes after Tree leaves Carter’s room. The big hook of the movie is that it explains what caused Tree’s time loop–Ryan’s science thesis project. Just when Tree thinks she’s out, Ryan ends up making it worse and before long it’s more than just Tree’s life on the line in this alternative timeline. This movie almost changes genres, adding science fiction to the thriller aspects while keeping the dash of horror movie influences. I give credit for the effort in making this movie stand out and unique. By pushing the time idea, it remixes the events of the first movie offering different routes for the characters to take and changing the mystery of who the killer is. I did find it weird and disappointing that despite Ryan being the focal point of the movie at the start, he falls to the wayside and Tree headlines the movie again. That said, what they do for Tree is well done and interesting. She doesn’t do the same motions as the first film and more opportunities are made with the timeline change to give more depth of her character. She has to make a few hard choices which help make for a more interesting story in the end. While I like the first one more, this is a worthy sequel.

Green Room– A punk band travels to the woods of Portland, Oregon on a last ditch effort to make some money on their sputtering tour. The gig is at a neo-nazi bar but they’re reassured they’ll be playing early in the day so the crowd won’t be too gnarly, the contact at the venue is cool, and the amount money they’ll get for playing a few songs will be enough for them to get back home. The kids end up seeing something bad–essentially being at the wrong place at the wrong time–and they are forced to fight for their survival. This movie is awesome from start to finish. A good set-up with a fun cast you get to know and like quickly and then the decent into chaos ratchets up perfectly. Patrick Stewart is in this with a role I’ve never seen him do before. The late great Anton Yelchin is fantastic in this as well so watching this kept me at the edge of my seat the entire time. There’s a good amount of violence and gore on display but it isn’t gratuitous which I think was a good move. What’s there sells the horror and that’s enough. The whole movie takes place almost entirely in one location and the set is used really well. The band tries various ways to get out so the pacing has these great peaks and valleys of action. The only thing I didn’t like is that I didn’t watch this movie sooner.