Mark Reviews Movies: HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | February 13, 2019

The surprise and pleasure of the original Happy Death Day was how it used its gimmick—in which a college student has to re-live the day she is murdered by a masked killer over and over again—to tell the story of its lead character learning not to be such a jerk. There was more to it, of course, and there was also the funny meta-gag of the protagonist transforming from an unlikeable, disposable character in a horror movie into one whom you hope will survive.

As clever as it was in pointing out how inherently repetitive slasher movies generally are, the first film's gimmick was just that—a gimmick, used as a springboard to actually say something about the horror genre and the character who's stuck in a time loop. One could argue that Happy Death Day 2U, the fast-arriving sequel, is a satirical commentary on the repetitive nature of horror movie sequels, although one feels less inclined to find the evidence for that. It just feels, well, repetitive.

Writer/director Christopher Landon (who directed the original) certainly goes to a lot of pains in order to find a way in which the previously looping protagonist can go through the loop all over again. We get an explanation for why Tree (Jessica Rothe) was stuck re-living and being re-murdered on her birthday. It has to do with an experimental device, developed by a bunch of college students and called the Sisyphean Quantum Generator. Basically, its purpose is to slow down time. Given the name, one wonders if Ryan (Phi Vu), the guy who kept appearing near the start of Tree's repeating day, actually knew what it would do.

He finds out first-hand in a prologue that has him working on the device the morning after Tree's birthday. By the end of it, he has been murdered by an anonymous killer wearing the same baby mask as the slasher who kept ending Tree's life. Just like Tree, he awakens to find himself repeating the same day.

Thankfully, we don't stick around with Ryan for too long, and instead, we return to Tree, who hears her new boyfriend Carter's (Israel Broussard) neighbor talk about feeling a sense of déjà vu and puts the pieces together. She and Carter try to stop Ryan's loop, and in the process, the device is started again. Tree is blasted into a different dimension, where it's her birthday again and someone is trying to kill her—again.

Landon's thinking here is simultaneously predictable and unexpected. Since there really is nowhere else to go with Tree's character (After all, she did all of her growing up and coming to terms with things by previously re-living this day), it's almost a given that this sequel will have to plant its focus on the evolving nature of the gimmick.

The other choice—to simply do away with Tree as the protagonist—seems unthinkable, especially since Rothe now gets to channel and constrict the manic frustration of her existential crisis. Rothe's performance is once again great here, although it's in a slightly different key than the first film. We get the comic exasperation, but we also get a Tree who better understands herself, her pain, and her responsibility to others.

The unexpected part is that the gimmick becomes less about horror-movie clichés and more about the story's newly revealed science-fiction elements. Tree keeps dying, naturally, because that's the established necessity of this series. This time, though, her deaths aren't primarily at the hands of the killer or killers.

See, in this other dimension, Tree's roommate Lori (Ruby Modine) isn't trying to kill her, and her mother Julie (Missy Yager) is still alive, too. The downside is that Tree isn't dating Carter, because he's dating her sorority sister Danielle (Rachel Matthews). After weighing the pros and cons of this other plane of existence, Tree decides she wants Ryan and his team to close the loop, keeping her in this other dimension. In order for them to learn from their mistakes, though, Tree has to memorize their progress and kill herself in order to restart the day.

It's not so convoluted that we lose track of things, mainly because the basic premise remains, only with a significant adjustment to the cause of it. There isn't, though, as clear a through line with this new plot device. The mystery of the killer takes a backseat to the back-and-forth of Tree helping the student scientists—almost to the point that, when we finally do get a standoff with the killer(s), it feels like an afterthought. It's almost appropriate that the sequel takes place in a different universe. It often feels as if it possesses an entirely different conceit from its predecessor—and, sometimes, like a couple of different movies within itself.

Like the first film, though, this one does work when it ignores the gimmick and allows Tree some room to grow. There's far less room here, mostly to do with her deciding between the relationship with her mother and the one she might have with Carter, but it remains a surprise that there's a beating heart beneath these movies. Still, Happy Death Day 2U may amp up and alter the conceit and focus of what came before it, but in the process, the movie loses too much of what made the original work.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the DVD

Buy the Blu-ray