Happy Face Review: Creepy True Crime Drama

Inspired by a true story, Happy Face is a creepy portrayal of a manipulative serial killer’s efforts to work his way back into his daughter’s life.

Happy Face is one creepy, intense, unsettling portrayal of a daughter navigating the impact of her father’s crimes on her family, the victims’ families, and her own identity. Once you start it, you’ll want to binge it straight through; it’s full of mystery, intrigue, and depth.

Happy Face is inspired by the true-life story of Melissa G. Moore, the critically acclaimed “Happy Face” podcast from iHeartPodcasts and Moore, and the autobiography “Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter”, written by Moore with M. Bridget Cook. Per the synopsis, as an adult, Melissa changed her name and closely guarded her family secret while her father served life in prison. The series adaptation doesn’t take us back and start from the beginning. Instead, it establishes what we already know: Happy Face was caught and arrested in 1995 then sentenced to life in prison. Happy Face picks up here and jumps off from Moore’s story.

It’s been 15 years since Melissa (Annaleigh Ashford, of B Positive) has seen her father, more since he’s been in prison. She’s a successful make-up artist on a true crime tv talk show that is not at all unlike Dr. Phil, is happily married, and has a beautiful family. By appearances, her life seems perfect, but it’s far from it. She’s harbored this family secret for almost two decades, and while her husband knows the truth, her young but aging children do not… until one day, when Melissa’s daughter Hazel (Khiyla Aynne, of Trap) receives a card in the mail on her 15^th birthday. Not knowing who it’s from, she asks her mother, who reads it and realizes it’s from her father, Hazel’s grandfather, and he’s back at his games, now trying to go through his grandchild to get under his daughter’s skin and manipulate her into doing what he wants her to do, which is come and see him, but she won’t. She refuses.

That changes at work one day when Melissa’s boss calls her in his office. It seems the Happy Face killer has reached out to talk show host Dr. Greg (David Harewood, of The Agency) with a juicy nugget of information about his murdering spree, but he’ll only talk to two people: Dr. Greg and Melissa. Dr. Greg presses Melissa on why Happy Face knows and is requesting to speak with her, and with the pressure of the truth hot-breathing down her neck, she confesses that Happy Face is her father—something that makes Dr. Greg and his producer salivate. 

Happy Face claims he lied in his confession, that there are really nine victims instead of eight, and if Melissa comes to the prison to talk to him, he’ll reveal who the ninth victim is and where her remains are. While every cell in Melissa’s body screams NO, her boss, Ivy (Tamera Tomakili, of Blindspotting), screams YES by encouraging her to face her father, not run from him and what he did, to think of the family she’ll be helping. Begrudgingly, Melissa agrees, then she and Ivy head out to meet with him, and boy is that first meeting unsettling.

Dennis Quaid, of The Substance, plays our notorious serial killer Keith Jesperson, who raped and murdered at least eight women in the northwestern part of the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as “the Happy Face killer” because he drew smiley faces on his numerous letters and messages to the media and authorities. Our first impression of him? CREEPY. With his giant eyes and his Jokeresque smile, Quaid makes for quite the manipulator and serial killer. But he’s also got this protective side to him when it comes to his family—odd, right?

Things don’t go as planned for Ivy and Melissa, though, as Happy Face wants his way or he refuses to talk. When Melissa gets upset and leaves the room, Ivy takes the opportunity to question him, but he won’t budge and instead tells her that Melissa knows where the ninth victim is, to ask her. Now Melissa really can’t let this go, because if she holds the key to finding a missing murder victim and can bring peace to a family in pain, she must go all in. And she does.

Happy Face focuses heavily on the father-daughter dynamic and bounces back and forth between the relationship the two had while Melissa was growing up versus what they’re navigating in the present day. However, we aren’t riddled with non-sequitur techniques, jumping all over the place, so we stay centered in what’s going on. For the most part, we follow Melissa as she works with Ivy to identify and locate this ninth victim and, as they find out in their research, save an innocent man in Texas on death row convicted of the crime. This twist in the narrative adds entirely new layers of mystery, depth, and intrigue as we follow along… but it’s not the only twist, and believe you me, there are many. These twists help drive our intrigue in this narrative.

Annaleigh Ashford is superb in Happy Face. She’s a loving, present, hard-working mother who struggles to put her past behind her and move forward because her father won’t let her. His continuous efforts at contact, which she never gives into, keep her in limbo between her identities of serial killer’s daughter and wife/mother/make-up artist turned television consulting producer. Likewise, Kate Maree, of Mani, who plays Melissa as a teenager, is equally memorable. Their effort to portray emotion so that we feel what they’re feeling in a specific moment is effortless, making Happy Face feel completely natural in its presentation of its narrative.

In addition to addressing themes of murder, justice, and awareness of identity, Happy Face also explores family and interracial dynamics. Not only do we get the dynamics of Melissa growing up, but we also get them within her present-day family with her husband Ben (James Will, of The Luckiest Man in America). Moreover, it’s worth mentioning here that this ninth victim was white, and the man accused of her murder is Black, so this brings interracial dynamics into the story on a level with which we are, unfortunately, all too familiar. And then we have awareness of identity, which alters after one experiences trauma, especially at an early age. As such, Melissa struggles through her entire life not to be “the daughter of a serial killer”. She works hard to create a new life and identity for herself, but Happy Face reminds us that creation of that type never works unless trauma is resolved. And that, my friends, is the message of this adaptation.

Happy Face offers a different take than other true crime adaptations in its focus on the serial killer’s family over the serial killer and his/her actions. In this way, the series is unique. Overall, Happy Face is full of mystery, curiosity, and depth in its creepy look at the effects of horrific truths and trauma on one’s life and identity, and thanks to a fabulously intriguing narrative and memorable performances from our cast, it’s a delicious, bingeworthy watch.

The two-episode series premiere of Happy Face will be available to stream globally on Paramount+ on March 20, 2025, with new episodes released every Thursday and the series finale on May 1. Click here to try Paramount+ for free!

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