.If you want to hear about the original ending of Happy Death Day, stick around to the end
of this video.
CZ: “Hey, what’s up?”
WD: “Someone sounds groggy AF.”
CZ: “What do you want?”
WD: “Did you fall asleep editing a Things You Missed video again?”
CZ: “Uhh no…
Not at all.”
WD: “I don’t believe you.
You still down to film a 3AM challenge tomorrow?”
CZ: “Yeah sure…
what time?”
WD: “You’re the worst.
I’m hanging up now.
Don’t forget to transfer me that $10.
CZ: ”K”
Throughout the movie you get little bits of information, and if you’re paying attention,
you can piece some of that info together.
For example, you may notice that the date Tree has to relive is September 18th.
Over the course of the movie we also pick up that it’s her birthday,
It’s her late Mother’s birthday,
And it falls on a Monday this year, so we can use that information to pretty much determine
that it takes place in the same year of the release, 2017.
It hasn’t fallen on a Monday before this year since 2006 and won’t again until 2023.
Given that information, I tried to see if there was any significance to this date and
found a couple of possibilities.
The first, is that it’s HIV Awareness Day.
In the conversation with Danielle, the sorority leader girl, Tree is given her tips to prevents
that sort of thing.
There is even a version of the script where Danielle tells her to be mindful so that she
doesn’t contract a bacterial infection.
September 18th is also World Water Monitoring Day.
If you watched my last video you know that I think there could be some references to
environmental preservation.
Her name is Tree, which is a weird name unless you are naming your character like that for
a reason…
Her killer is always trying to cut her down, a symbol of deforestation.
Every day she wakes up goes outside where she is greeted with a woman wearing a shirt
that reads “Tree Huggers United”.
The woman wants her to sign a petition to stop global warming, which she constantly
ignores.
Then the sprinklers go off prematurely which can tie directly back into the water preservation
thing.
One of the kills literally involves killing her with a bong; director Christopher Landon
is almost directly telling us that pollution is killing our trees, our environment.
Each day she only has a limited amount of time to figure out who her killer is, just
as we are running out of time to save our environment.
And we see this in the movie.
Despite the fact that she gets a reset every day, she starts to feel the long term effects
of being killed every night.
The doctor tells her she can’t continue like this because she’s starting to incur
permanent damage.
And then there’s the fact that it’s her birthday, and outside of the obvious sound-alike
of birthday and Earth Day, maybe Landon is telling us that each year that goes by, we
are killing our environment more and more.
If we’re not nice to our environment, it’s not going to be nice to us in the future.
If you’re not totally convinced that she represents the environment, just look at all
of the stuff in her room.
It’s filled with butterflies, feathers, birds and stuffed animals.
And throughout the movie, there’s the fact that there is no tomorrow for her, no future.
If we do too much damage now, science won’t be able to save her later.
CZ: “Hey, what’s up?”
WD: “Someone sounds groggy AF.”
CZ: “...Didn’t we have this conversation?”
WD: “What are you talking about?”
CZ: “Are you about to ask me to film a 3AM challenge for you?”
WD: “Yeah.
You still down?”
CZ: “Sure.
Why not.”
WD: “Cool.
And don’t forget to send me that $10.”
There was a lot of symbolism in the movie relating to the time loop that Tree is stuck
in.
When she first wakes up, on the nightstand next to the bed, you’ll see a book of Sudoku,
the Japanese number puzzles.
Tree is trying to solve her own puzzle in this movie, the puzzle of her own murder.
And like a Sudoku puzzle, it’s something that becomes easier to solve the more that
you have filled in.
When she first walks outside on the campus, one of the things that always reoccurs is
the guys who are trying to stay awake for some protest.
We don’t really know what they’re protesting, but they’re always on hour 26, which is
a good way to tell the audience that time isn’t progressing, and the one on the right
always passes out, which alludes to Tree’s eventual exhaustion from re-dying the same
death over and at one point passing out very early on in the day.
Also, on a side note, did anyone else think the guy the second guy from the right looked
a lot like Comedy Shorts Gamer?
"It's ComedyShortsGamer!"
Anyway, when Tree goes to Gregory’s class, it seems to be some kind of astronomy class
or something.
I couldn’t really comprehend what the lesson was about, but it seemed like he was talking
about the orbit of the earth, which is also the benchmark that we, as humans, use to measure
and help us construct our perception of time.
So technically, if she relives the same day over and over, she’s retreading the same
part of the path that the earth travels, in it’s orbit of the sun.
There was a lot to take in at the fraternity party.
There was so much decoration there that I’m sure there was stuff that I missed, so let
me know what you noticed in the comments.
And I’m also curious about your interpretation of all the medieval looking knight’s armor
in the frat house.
I feel like it has something to do with the vase full of arrows next to Lori and Tree’s
TV, but I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.
There was also this tree of bras in the corner of the room.
I didn’t go to a big college so if anyone can explain that, it would be appreciated.
It might just be something that’s used to a similar effect of a pin-up girl, which we
also see on the opposite side of the room.
I feel like it might have something to do with the fact that the place is covered in
these Rooster graphics.
Roosters are all male and this is a house comprised of all male college students.
Nick’s bedroom represents a dead end for our protagonist.
There are more obvious signs, like the skull and crossbones, while there are also more
subtle ones.
One of the posters says “tomorrow” on it, taunting Tree on what she cannot have.
There’s a large do not enter sign on the back of the door.
Not only does this tell her that she can’t escape the room, but let’s also consider
the meaning of a do not enter sign.
It’s something that tells us we have to go back from where we came, which she’s
doing each time she gets killed, she resets and goes back to the beginning of the day.
The sign contrasts quite nicely with a sign we only see at the very end of the movie,
in Carter’s room: a one-way sign.
This shows up after the cycle has been broken and tells us that time is only going to flow
in one direction now.
She’s not going to be retracing her steps any longer.
She’s only going one way.
Forward.
CZ: “Hello?”
WD: “Someone sounds groggy AF.”
CZ: “Not again…” WD: “Not what again?”
CZ: “Look I know you’re never gonna believe this, but I keep reliving the same day.”
WD: “I’ll believe you.”
CZ: “You will?”
WD “Sure.
Just Venme that $10.”
CZ: “Hey what’s up?”
WD: “Someone sounds groggy AF.”
CZ: “Yeah.
Well I’ve been stuck reliving the same day over and over again.”
WD: “I mean, that’s basically what it’s like working in the fast food industry, soo….
CZ: “I think I’ve figured it out though.
I need to make the perfect Things You Missed video.
That has to be the key to breaking the cycle.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.
No literally, let’s talk about the elephant in the main character’s room.
A little elephant ornament can be found on the ground in the corner across from the door.
At first I only had my suspicions of what it might represent, but it was more or less
confirmed when I heard the director refer to the similarity to Groundhog Day as “the
elephant in the room,” saying that he put that line from Carter, which compares Tree’s
situation to that of Bill Murray’s in Groundhog Day.
Since these comparisons are unavoidable, Landon decided to embrace the elephant in the room.
Like the one in Tree’s room.
Under the table.
In many ways Happy Death Day is written as a spiritual successor to Groundhog Day.
Both characters wake up to a song each morning.
Both start off as kind of nasty people and come to see the error of their ways.
Both have an arc where they try to help everyone in the community.
Both have arcs of experimentation.
Both have a cycle where they try killing themselves, and both eventually learn to put others before
themselves.
The other elephant in the room right now is the remote control scene, where Tree locks
herself in the room, can’t find the remote, and the channels start changing automatically.
It seems veryyy similar to my short film, Remote Threat.
Roll it.
If you want to see the whole film, pop on over here.
You can also find evidence of Lori’s guilt throughout the story.
Nobody is supposed to know when Tree’s birthday even is.
Lori claims to get that info from her driver’s license.
But I think she’s lying, because she also tries to calm Tree down by saying, “I know
today is hard, with your Mom”.
How would she also know that Tree’s Mom shared the same birthday or even that her
Mom had passed away?
It looks like she was doing a lot more digging than previously indicated.
When Tree confesses to having already lived through the day multiple times, she predicts
that Lori already made her a cupcake.
Roll it.
Tree: "I know it sounds totally crazy, but this is happening to me I swear."
Lori: "Tree, I'm sure it feels like you're-- Tree: "Okay you made a cupcake for my birthday,
right?"
Look at her face right here.
It looks like she’s afraid that Tree may have found out her secret plan.
Then when she reveals that someone is trying to kill her, Lori tries to convince her that
nobody is trying to kill her, which is not a logical response.
If I were Lori in that situation and I was innocent, I’d be asking her why she thinks
someone is trying to kill her and trying to get her to safety, not just telling her that
she’s crazy and it’s impossible that someone wants to take her out.
Also, she gets way too offended when Tree doesn’t eat the cupcake.
Then there’s the elevator scene where Tree goes to see Gregory, the professor she is
having an affair with.
She runs into Lori, and Lori tells her there will be consequences for her actions, but
what we don’t know at that point is the consequences will be death, and the reason
is that Lori also has a crush on Gregory.
The most obvious one though, should have been that Lori hides in the bathroom when Tree
locks herself in their room.
That’s where we see the remote scene.
Lori’s the only one who would have access to that room without looking suspicious and
by being Tree’s only roommate, she pretty much gets a guarantee that Tree will be alone.
And then finally, in the scene where Tree is locked in the cop car, Lori drops a birthday
candle onto the trail of gasoline to blow up the car.
The only other candle we see is the one on Lori’s cupcake.
It’s actually not the same candle though, they are different colors and look totally
different, so that actually threw some doubt into my mind at the time and made me think
it wasn’t Lori.
I actually kind of thought it was Danielle because the scene where she crosses Danielle
off the suspect list, the two get hit by a bus, which seemed like more of an accident
than a killing.
Why would Danielle kill herself off if she did want to off Tree?
I don’t think Lori was behind it either, I think she just died by coincidence that
time.
What’s not a coincidence, however, are the footsteps I hear behind me right now.
CZ: “West Dakota?
Why are you trying to kill me?”
WD: "Hold up.
I can explain.
You know when you borrowed $10 at the underground turtle ring.”
CZ: “Yeah."
WD: "You told me you were making a Things You Missed on Happy Death Day so I came up
with this genius plan on how to get $10 every single day by making you think you kept reliving
the same day over and over again.
And I did.
And now I have $40."
CZ: "You know Dakota, like I would be about that, but that's one of the least lazy things
that you've actually done.
But I'm still gonna beat the crap out of you."
WD: "Oh geeze."
In the original Happy Death Day ending, just when it seems Tree has made it out of the
woods and advanced to the next day, as she is resting in the hospital, someone in the
Baby mask comes up and pokes a syringe into her, killing her once more.
It is revealed to be Gregory’s wife.
I usually like dark endings, but I’m glad they changed it to what it is today, and if
you agree go ahead and drop a like on this video.
I really did film that 3AM Challenge with WestDakota, so click the card to go check
that one out.
Remember to subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors twice a week in October, ring that
deathbell for notifications and I’ll see you in the next one.
Assuming we make it to tomorrow...