HAPPY DEATH DAY 2 U: Needlessly Convoluted, Sometimes Inconsequential But Mostly A Fun, Enjoyable Back to the Future-style Comedy

Genre: Horror, Mystery, Sci-fi, Thriller

Produced by: Jason Blum

Directed by: Christopher Landon

Written by: Christopher Landon

Production Company: Universal Pictures

Starring: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Suraj Sharma, Charles Aitken 

Runtime: 100 minutes              

SYNOPSIS: 

Picking up from where Happy Death Day (2017) left off, Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is suddenly forced to relive the same day all over again. Only this time, the September 18^th she is re-experiencing is not the same as how she had remembered it. As if the stakes aren’t high enough, now her friends become a part of the time loop. So now, she must find a way to break both herself and her friends out of the loop, while once again having to deal with a baby-masked killer out in the open. 

REVIEW: 

Groundhog Day (1993) meets Scream (1996) meets Mean Girls (2004). 

Put all these titles together, and in a nutshell, it becomes Happy Death Day, comic book writer Scott Lobdell’s elevator pitch for Blumhouse Production’s next horror hit. There’s no denying Blumhouse’s reputation as one of the most financially influential film studios in Hollywood when it comes to horror movies, considering the many low-budget horror movies it produced that quickly and continuously made profits at the box office. And so, getting a “yes” from a man of power like Jason Blum is sure to put any low-budget horror movie screenplay one step closer towards success. Simply slap Jason Blum’s name on the title, then it is a guarantee to get butts in the seats. 

That clearly was not the case when Blum first received Lobdell’s script. This was right before the whole Paranormal Activity (2007) craze, and way, way before Blum became the household name he is today.  Out of the many Blumhouse Productions so far, Happy Death Day took the longest to turn from page-to-screen. In fact, the script had been sitting on Blum’s office, dusty, untouched, for nearly a decade. 

Back in 2007, Lobdell’s script, then- titled Half to Death, was close to being made with Megan Fox, at the height of her popularity, poised for the lead role. As it turned out, having a marketable name like Fox isn’t enough to get the project over the line. By now, Blum doesn’t need a marketable name or even one at all to get whatever project he desires over the line. In this case, taking Fox’s place was the relatively unknown Jessica Rothe. At the end of the day, Happy Death Day wasn’t a runaway hit per se, but in typical Blumhouse fashion, it managed to recoup its small budget in no time, with generally positive critical and audience reception to boot. On those two evidences alone, it is enough to convince Blumhouse to make a sequel. 

Unlike Happy Death Day though, it only took Blumhouse less than two years to turn Happy Death Day 2 U from page-to-screen. Like Happy Death Day, Christopher Landon returns to direct the sequel, while also taking over the screenwriting duty from Lobdell. And who would have known that in Landon’s eyes, he had always seen Happy Death Day as the first chapter in a planned trilogy. Breaking away from the typical horror movie sequel tradition, he promises a sequel that is not a retread, but rather a deeper exploration of the things that happened in the first movie. With such approach, is it worth re-experiencing Tree’s life over and over again? Is Happy Death Day 2 U going to be the cure to horror movie’s sequelitis? 

At the end of the day, liking Happy Death Day 2 U or not depends on expectations. It really circles back to one’s impression of Happy Death Day. Ask this question: what was the best part of Happy Death Day? Was it the slasher kills? Was it the college comedy? Or is it the time loop twist to these two aforementioned genres? The previous movie was indeed both a slasher movie and a college comedy, with a time loop twist. 

The movie’s lead character Tree Gelbman herself is a mash-up of two stock characters from those two genres. As a slasher movie character, Tree Gelbman is both Happy Death Day’s slasher movie’s first victim as well as its final girl. As a slasher movie with a time loop twist, it follows the journey of a slasher movie’s first victim who needs to get killed over and over again to earn her final girl status. As a college comedy character, Tree Gelbman is both Happy Death Day’s bad girl and its good girl. As a college comedy with a time loop twist, it follows the journey of a mean girl who needs to relive the same day over and over again to learn to become a better person. 

So, if some say that the best part of Happy Death Day was the slasher kills, then bad news: there is going to be less of that in Happy Death Day 2 U. Whereas most slasher sequels tend to up the kills or gore factor, Happy Death Day 2 U takes the wildest of turns by veering further away from the slasher formula. In fact, as much as the poster suggests the importance of the series’ iconic baby-masked killer, he is barely in it. Sure, he pops up once or twice, but in the grand scheme of things, he’s not all that important or as important as the movie might have hoped for. 

Some may argue Happy Death Day’s worth as a slasher movie, but at least, that movie still felt like a slasher. The killer there seemed more consequential to the heroine’s fate. Find out who the killer is or risk dying all over again, it’s that simple. 

Happy Death Day 2 U once again forces the heroine and the killer into another round of the cat-and-mouse chase, but as far as relevance goes: does it really matter if Tree finds out who her killer is? That would be a no. Tree’s objective remains breaking out of the time loop, but by now, the means have changed. As a result, confronting her killer becomes nothing more than a mere obstacle, not the ultimate goal. It’s just one problem, but not the biggest problem. And by the time the movie gets to the third act reveal, a moment that should have been shocking, instead, most of the audience just couldn’t care less. 

At the same time, on an entertainment basis, the slasher kills themselves are underwhelming. True, in terms of the violence, a PG-13 slasher movie can only go so far. But then again, in that first movie, Tree was killed by a smashed bong. It’s done off-screen, but based on idea alone, it’s creative as hell.

And the creative kills seem to be coming in short supply here. All it has is a simple stab of the kitchen knife, that’s it. Even the sequence leading up to it is as old-fashioned and tired as any middle-of-the-road slasher movies, which as followed: characters walking down creepy hallways, the killer lurking in the dark, all the sound dies down, and then a loud jump scare as the killer, wielding a kitchen knife, pops up from behind them and starts killing. Anything more creative than that is mostly rehashed from the first movie. 

But, if some say that the best part of Happy Death Day was the college comedy, then good news: there is going to be the more of the same in Happy Death Day 2 U than in its predecessor. Happy Death Day 2 U is a movie with the intention of doubling down on the laughs, which is not all that surprising. Looking back at Happy Death Day, it’s fair to say that that movie itself was predominantly a comedy. It’s at heart a funny tale of a woman’s road to redemption, that just so happens to have a killer on the loose. There’s some slasher flavor around the buns, but the real meat remains a college comedy movie. It was more of a Groundhog Day and Mean Girls than it was a PG-13 version of Scream. Tree’s arc resembled more of Phil Connors’ or Cady Heron’s arc than of Sidney Prescott’s. 

In line with its predecessor, Happy Death Day 2 U feels more like an iconic 80’s comedy classic than a PG-13 version of Scream. Referenced at one point in the movie by Tree’s friend Carter (Israel Broussard), he compares Tree’s current situation in Happy Death Day 2 U with the one that Marty McFly went through throughout the Back to the Future trilogy (1985-1990). And that is really the most appropriate way to describe Happy Death Day 2 U. It goes from being a time loop comedy that is subtle about being a sci-fi movie to a time travel comedy that is so in-your-face about being a sci-fi movie. This movie could not any more sci-fi than having a time machine and a bunch of Doc Browns operating it. 

But this movie’s similarities to Back to the Future go beyond just name-dropping or devices. Structurally, Happy Death Day 2 U almost feels like a beat-by-beat recreation of the 1985 original. Back to the Future sees Marty McFly travel to an alternate reality where he encounters people that are close to him in his home reality, but personality-wise, they feel like different people. Happy Death Day 2 U sees Tree travel to various alternate realities where she meets friends and people around her campus who act more different than how she remembered them. 

More or less similar, but who is to say that it’s not perfectly executed. The movie fully takes advantage of the whole time travel premise, by means of subverting tiny personal details regarding what Tree know about the September 18^th in the first movie. Characters who Tree thought were one way in one reality is suddenly the complete opposite in another reality. A lot of the humorous highlights are derived from Tree trying to deal with these discrepancies, and how that influences her and her relationship with other characters in certain realities. 

At the same time, the movie’s time travel element is not without its own shortcomings.  Having a sequel attempts to explain why Tree is stuck on a time loop kind of demystifies the predecessor’s beautiful ambiguity. There is nothing wrong with going deeper into the mythology, but sometimes, movies like Happy Death Day are better left unexplained. 

Why is Tree stuck on a time loop? Well, there’s supposed to be no clear reason to it. If there is going to be any clear reason, it should be just because it happens, no more no less. All that matters is that she has to go through the same day over and over again and rely on the smallest of details she learn from the day to break out of the loop. It’s the simplicity in such vagueness that makes the idea more fun. 

It’s by no means saying that Happy Death Day 2 U is not fun, but it definitely loses a bit of that fun factor by getting so bogged down in its own science. In this movie, why is Tree stuck on a time loop? Apparently, it has something to do with a malfunction to some college students’ time travel machine. In this reality, she doesn’t just have to go through the same day or rely on details to undo the loop, but she also has to memorize some complicated math formula over and over again in order to fix the time travel machine. Sound much more complicated, huh? Credit to Landon though, the time travel machine correlation with Tree’s time loop sounds like an exciting concept, but upon execution, it proves to be too convoluted for its own good. 

Somehow, convoluted serves as a recurring theme in Happy Death Day 2 U. Its opening sequence kind of sets the tone for the movie’s convoluted narrative structure. Misdirection is a positive thing, especially in horror movies. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1966) emphasizes the importance of misdirection in the genre. It is clear that Landon is inspired by Psycho in the way he opens this movie. Like how people in the 60’s believed that Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane was going to be Psycho’s main character, Happy Death Day 2 U’s opening sequence creates the impression that it is going to go through the time loop/slasher movie scenario in the eyes of a new main character. 

For awhile, it seems like an interesting idea, exploring Tree’s universe through the eyes of another character, but in the long run, that opening sequence eventually becomes both pointless and misleading. Does this character manage to break out of the loop? Is the killer killing this character the same as the one killing Tree? The moment Tree regains her main character position, these questions are quickly abandoned. That opening sequence ends up being a long, contrived process to get Tree back on the time loop train. 

But Happy Death Day 2 U isn’t all about just baby-masked killer, science and fun and games. With quite a surprising decent amount of dramatic heft, it is also a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve. And this comes from Landon’s character-driven script. Such approach has been what sets Happy Death Day apart from other slasher and teen movies. It’s much concerned about how the experience transforms Tree for the better rather than whether she triumphs over the slasher movie killer. As a result, the lead heroine here feels much more fleshed out than the typical slasher movie or teen comedy movie character. 

Happy Death Day 2 U continues the series’ character-driven storytelling tradition as well as adds an extra layer of depth into it. Emotionally, Tree’s latest time loop adventure has a bigger impact and stake than in the first movie. It’s a movie that goes skin-deep into the details of Tree’s personal life, particularly her relationship with friends and family. 

Sure, it already had a whole movie that explores her relationship with her friends, or a friend to be exact in the form of Carter. But by now, the bond between her and Carter is more special here than in the first movie, ever borderline romantic. It’s so special that it bugs her any time she steps into a reality where their relationship doesn’t exist. Her poignant relationship with her family though is only briefly hinted in the first movie, and here, it gets a far bigger portion. To Tree, it is also as special, in fact so special that she is not willing to sacrifice it for anything in the world, even Carter. In the end, it poses an intriguing dilemma that any human, with or without the time loop context, can relate to: stay in the past or move on from it. 

Reviewing a Happy Death Day movie just would not be the complete without talking about its breakout star Jessica Rothe. Look, Happy Death Day could survive a revolving door of slasher villains, but there is no way that it could survive without Rothe playing the lead heroine Tree Gelbman. It’s not the baby-masked killer, but rather Rothe that is the true heartbeat of these movies, keeping things pulsing with her own high-octane energy and magnetic charm. 

Once again, Rothe grabs its audience attention in Happy Death Day 2 U with a performance that is more of the same, albeit with an extra dramatic flair. She storms through every scene like a person that’s high on sugary substances, which works in favor of this movie’s more comedic leanings.  She consistently displays fluent comic timing, whether she’s playing with verbal humor or physical humor. Most of the time, the premise gives her more room to explore her talent as a physical comedian, and as always in these movies, she rises to the occasion, selling her character’s every slapstick antics. 

Beyond just her comedic muscle, Happy Death Day 2 U paves the way for Rothe to stretch a bit more of her dramatic muscle. As a dramatic actress, she gives as good of a performance. She proves to be a compelling presence in the movie’s more heartfelt and heartbreaking moments, making the audience feel the real, raw human emotion. Rothe doesn’t just turn Tree into a character that’s worth investing for all her wackiness, but also for her humanity. It’s so bizarre that her only film credit post-Happy Death Day fame to date was the Nicholas Sparks-esque melodrama Forever My Girl (2018). Her versatile performance here should have people lining up offering her more roles by now. 

CONCLUSION: 

Happy Death Day 2 U might be needlessly convoluted as a time travel movie or inconsequential as a slasher movie, but it is still an enjoyable Back to the Future-style ride brought to life by some snappy humor, fun twist to sequences from the first one and Jessica Rothe’s charming turn. 

Score: 7.5/10