Happy Death Day 2U Review

It's the week of Valentine's Day. Depending on when you're reading this, it might even be Valentine's Day. Thus there's nothing more romantic than watching Jessica Rothe get stuck yet another time loop, where she has to face off against another baby face killer, right? OK, I tease. But "Happy Death Day" was a surprise hit in October 2017 that I rather enjoyed. Yeah, sure, if you did an in depth analysis of it, it's kind of a dumb movie with a lot of plot holes that doesn't necessarily make sense. And if you're looking for an actual horror movie, it's not particularly scary. But I found it to be a lot of fun because it's a very self-aware film that doesn't take itself seriously at all, so I was able to kick back, relax, and enjoy a silly time loop horror film. I'm not sure if "Groundhog Day" was the movie that started the time loop thing, but at the very least it certainly popularized it and now it's a trope that's been copied time and time again. By this point, you would think it was a trope that I was sick of. But for some strange reason that hasn't happened to me yet. Thus when "Happy Death Day 2U" was announcement, instead of rolling my eyes at another horror sequel done for a quick cash grab, I was totally down for this. It may be another dumb movie, but that was OK with me.

Describing this as a movie where Jessica Rothe getting stuck in another time loop is a bit of an oversimplification. They actually do set up more of a lore for this phenomenon. A simple way of explaining why this is happening. However, I don't know if I want to get too deep into that, even though said explanation takes place within the first 20 minutes of the movie. So I'll just say for now that the time loop phenomenon, instead of completely going away, gets passed onto their friend Ryan. When Ryan explains this to Tree (Jessica Rothe's character), she can immediately relate and they set out to figure out how to get Ryan out. Well, one thing leads to another and certain things go kaboom, and suddenly the time loop gets passed back to Tree, who completely loses her mind when she wakes up on her birthday again. Given that she's already cracked the code on how to solve this, she immediately approaches the perpetrator... only to realize that she hasn't just been sent back into the previous time loop. She's been sent back into an alternate dimension where everything's different and things have happened that she doesn't even remember. So now the challenge of this film is for her to figure out how to get back to her proper dimension where she belongs.

The first thing that comes to my mind as to why this movie worked for me is the performance of Jessica Rothe. She totally owns this role. I think the thing that some of these cheaply-made horror films forget is that if you're going to make an effective horror film, you need to have characters for the audience to care about. Being chased around by a serial killer or being haunted by an evil demon ultimately has no effect on me personally if I have no emotional investment in the main characters who are in trouble. It's even worse when some horror movies are so bad that you start cheering for the villain to quickly kill everyone off so you don't have to worry about these annoying main characters anymore. Luckily this movie doesn't have this problem and that's because of Jessica Rothe. She just has so much fun with this role that you can't help but cheer for her. And she has a surprisingly good character arc over the course of both of these films. In the first movie she goes from being confused at what's going on to putting on her detective hat to figure things out. In this movie she's flat out angry, thus making it a bad idea to get in her way. But then she runs into some surprising obstacles that forces her to show some emotion, and she does great at that, too.

Because of this, the movie went from being a silly horror film to a surprisingly emotional drama that had me caring quite a bit. There were some decisions that had to be made that caused me to feel for this girl. And, yeah, there's also plenty of fun to be had on top of all this. The movie becomes a bit sciency in parts, which was a major departure from the first film. I thought that was an interesting choice, but I ended up being fine with that. Because of that, instead of Tree deciding to get killed by the new baby face killer every night to figure things out, she comes up with some clever ways to kill herself when a reset is needed for reasons that I won't get too deep into. That leads us to our mandatory time loop montage that the trailers focused heavily on with Tree doing things like jumping off a plane in a bikini to drinking some sort of poisonous fluid in an auto parts store and a whole bunch of stuff like that. It might sound a bit morbid to be entertained by that, but this movie is meant to be a lot of fun. In fact, it goes to the point where the movie often forgets that it's a horror film. There's a large portion of this movie where the baby face killer is missing in action. I'm not sure if some will have a problem with that or not, but I didn't care. 

The other thing that I really appreciated about this movie is that the filmmakers here made an honest effort to separate this movie from the first film while also keeping the heart and soul in tact. There's a lot of horror franchises out there that get really lazy with their sequels. They manage to come up with a creative idea that a lot of people gravitate towards with their first film, but when they crack the code and make a lot of money, all the creativity gets thrown out the window in favor of a cash grab. Given that horror films are often the cheapest genre of movie to make, it's really easy to make a quick profit. Point in case, "Happy Death Day" was made on a budget of just $4.8 million. Thus a $55.7 million domestic total was a huge return on their investment that got even better when they ended with $125.5 million worldwide. If all they wanted to do was to make money, they didn't need to put much effort into this sequel all. They doubled their production budget to $9 million with "Happy Death Day 2U," thus a phoned-in, poorly-written retread would've easily given them a quick profit. But instead of doing that, it honestly felt like they cared about this property enough to build on the first movie and create a fun franchise rather than just scamming a bunch of teenagers.

Because of that, I look forward to more "Happy Death Day" movies. And yes, that's going to happen. The movie is currently projected to earn about $25 million through its first six days of release over this extended Valentine's Day and Presidents Day weekend. That right there is already makes this movie a success given the aforementioned $9 million production budget. Compare that to "Alita: Battle Angel," which is looking to take in around the same total this weekend, but is instead in a lot of trouble thanks to a $170 million production budget. That's why the business of the box office is a fascinating one to explore, in my opinion. Two movies can make the exact same total, but said total will make one studio throw a celebration while making the other studio spend the weekend hiding in their corners crying. Barring a Chinese miracle, don't expect an "Alita" sequel. But do expect a "Happy Death Day 3." They even have a mid-credits scene that sets it up. And you better believe I'm on board. Had "Happy Death Day 2U" been a lazy retread that bored me, I may have felt differently, but because they made a real effort to build on the first movie, giving us a fun follow-up that still feels fresh, I'm open to getting more out of this franchise as long as they maintain their creativity.

Yes, there's a lot that could be nitpicked about this movie. Same thing goes with the first one. Said first movie ended up with a 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 65 percent audience score. I listened to a lot of the complaints and I totally understood the negativity. It was by no means a masterpiece of a film. But I didn't really care. I had fun with it. It was one of those movies where I was able to turn off my brain and enjoy. "Happy Death Day 2U" seems to be about on the same level. At the time of me typing this, there's still a lot of reviews yet to come in as they held those back until last night. But with 81 reviews counted, the score was at a 65 percent with the critics. Although it surprisingly has a much higher audience score compared to its predecessor with 83 percent right now, which is encouraging for me. But nevertheless, I've read through a lot of the negative reaction and I understand. In fact, I'm not going to rush to this movie's defense because I think there's a lot of solid points from the people not liking this. But ultimately said complaints didn't bother me. I just wanted to go have fun and I did. If you're on board with me in regards to the first film, then go check this sequel out. I'm going to give "Happy Death Day 2U" an 8/10.