‘Happy Death Day’ Receives A PG-13 Rating

No genre in cinema’s fans are as devout about a film’s rating as horror, with fans often dismissing movies before they’re even released based solely on its rating. When it comes to dramas, comedies, or romance, people rarely judge the film’s quality based solely on its MPAA rating, preferring to allow the quality of the film to determine its worth. With the recent announcement that the upcoming Happy Death Day will be rated PG-13 for “violence/terror, crude sexual content, language, some drug material, and partial nudity,” fans have grown pessimistic about the film’s worth.

Based on the film’s trailer, which you can watch above, the storyline centers around a college student, played by Jessica Rothe, who is murdered on her birthday. Instead of this marking the end of the character’s journey, it is merely the beginning, as she begins to realize every time she dies, she wakes up on the morning of her birthday to relive the experiences that led to her death. With these second chances on life, she hopes to discover who is responsible for her death in order to prevent her murder from ever happening.

As you can see from the trailer, the main character has no problem putting herself on the chopping block in gruesome ways to discover the killer’s identity, which would lead many to believe the film would follow in the tradition of something like Final Destination, which regularly featured shocking and unconventional deaths.

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As Bill Murray proved in Groundhog Day, it’s possible to create a highly entertaining film with a character that experiences the same day over and over, but with the character’s death being a vital part of the story, the MPAA’s decision might have hindered audiences from checking out the film.

Another recent PG-13 release, Wish Upon, opened to both disappointing reviews as well as disappointing box office numbers, resulting in the director ensuring audiences that there would be an unrated director’s cut of the film available on Blu-ray. The film’s director, John Leonetti, assured fans that the director’s cut wouldn’t only feature scenes of excessive violence, but also important character development.

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Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken, Israel Broussard and Rachel Matthew co-star alongside Rothe in Happy Death Day.

Happy Death Day is directed and co-written by Christopher Landon, who last worked with Blumhouse on Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones in 2014. He previously directed the 2015 horror-comedy Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.

Universal Pictures will release Happy Death Day in theaters October 13.