10 OKAY Movies Elevated By ONE Phenomenal Performance
6. Happy Death Day - Jessica Rothe
Jessica Rothe is a bonafide star, something which took audiences completely by surprise when Happy Death Day came out in 2017. The Groundhog Day meets Scream plot felt like the kind of thing you’d be more likely to find buried deep in the Netflix archive, rather than as a surprise box office hit.
But The Babysitter it ain’t. Happy Death Day’s plot is nothing special and the humour isn’t anything we’ve not seen before, but it knows what it is and keeps the runtime short. Rothe definitely seems like she could go on to bigger and better things after leading this one, and she’s essentially the whole reason it got a sequel.
She has the horror movie scream down, but she’s way more than just a pretty face for the gore. Her dry charm as the dynamic lead is what keeps this one going.
The movie is a bit smarter than it’s given credit for, riffing on the repetitive nature of slasher films, but this itself would get repetitive quickly without an able lead.
Thankfully, in Jessica Rothe they have one, and Hollywood may have found its next rising star.