| Director(s) | Christopher Landon |
| Principal Cast | Jessica Rothe as Tree Israel Broussard as Carter Phi Vu as Ryan |
| Release Date | 2019 |
| Language(s) | English |
| Running Time | 100 minutes |
I was so happy when I saw that Happy Death Day was getting a sequel. I actually went to this movie on opening week and remember leaving the theater feeling immensely satisfied. After watching it again recently, I’ve come to understand why. It’s like every problem I had with the first movie has been resolved in this one. The movie makes the brave decision to ACTUALLY expand on the ideas (if only all sequels could do this) which help it carve out an interesting little niche.
The movie picks up immediately after the first one and it’s revealed that the cause of all the time loops is Ryan’s science invention. After a series of mishaps, Tree ends up sent to a parallel dimension and is forced to find a way to escape the baby faced killer again. The sci-fi addition to the franchise gives it some much needed personality and makes the gimmick something more interesting. The way the characters end up reacting to the new knowledge gives us a ton of fun creative scenes that really push the black comedy aspect.
Characters from the past movie get more to do in this one. Because it’s a new universe, everyone shows a different side of themselves which gives Tree a lot of room to navigate and form new opinions. It makes people from the first movie feel more layered and is a fun play on the butterfly effect. It also gives the movie a more poignant emotional core that really made me feel for Tree. Speaking of Tree, Jessica Rothe kills it again in her performance. She’s given more room to have fun in this one and she takes a lot of pleasure in it.
Unfortunately, the one area the movie didn’t really improve on is the horror element of everything. The killer and their motivation in the first movie was pretty whack so I was curious to see how it would play it out in this one, and while it’s believable to an extent, it also feels kind of out there.
The pacing of the movie also feels off- there’s one moment in the third act where it feels like the movie has a natural ending, but then it keeps on going. It’s not that the extension feels bad. In fact, what happens makes a lot of sense- but it feels like it’s missing the polish the rest of the movie had. Maybe a subplot should have been removed and some events should have happened in a different order. I don’t know. It’s just a weird anomaly. The end credit scene does give me hope that the third movie (Please come out) does some crazy stuff, so here’s to that.
REPORT CARD
| TLDR | Happy Death Day 2U takes everything that was good from the first movie and amps it up. There’s a more interesting story, better character building, and even more fun levels of absurdity. The movie is more science fiction that it is horror, so if you’re expecting focused slasher you may want to look elsewhere. |
| Rating | 8.4/10 |
| Grade | B |
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .