_"You have a chance other people only ever dream of. You can say good bye."_

You know that saying that people always use that, "It hits you right in the feels," but some overuse it? I rarely ever feel it. But fuck, oh fuck me, I need to come here and say that Happy Death Day 2U did something I was not expecting at all. This is not a straight horror film, barely. This is a science fiction action mystery romantic comedy. Horror hardly fits the description, and that's what makes this so amazing. I feel bad I skipped this one out and saw Alita so many times, this came out the same weekend. Jason Blum, if you ever read this, know I'm sorry and I hope you continue to fund even more films like this. I know the general public flat out refuses original and poignant screenplays like this today, especially when this properly subverts expectations, but keep doing it. Give money to it. This got so much more complex and deep than I ever imagined a film like this could get. If you're going in to this expecting a romping slash-em-up and nothing more, you're going to leave more than empty handed. It's the equivalent of asking for fun bedtime story from your grandmother and she starts talking to you about the death of her husband. The overwhelming majority of the run time is the dilemma Tree must face between choosing to live in a timeline where her mother is alive, or where she's with her boyfriend Carter. The implications that because of this unforeseen consequence of this science experiment, she's actually given a choice to live a life that isn't hers, and if she doesn't, gets to do what others can't, and make peace directly with a lost loved one. The heavy hitting notes and the scenes where Tree breaks down to her mother, asking her what decision she must make, I could just imagine audiences checking out. There's this gut wrenching scene where she's choosing to sit down and spill it all out to her mother how much she loves her because she know it's the last time she'll see her, and just damn, it's intense. The rest when it isn't covering this raw family plot, is a literally by the numbers science fiction piece, in that it actually gets in to the technicals. They sit down multiple times to explain the way the universe has multiple dimensions and how she crossed paths with herself from her original dimension, etc. This makes Spider-Verse look like a second grade picture book. I was not expecting Landon to double down on what created the time loop in the first place, but it's surprisingly magnificent and doesn't tarnish the first in any way. In fact, it enhances itself above the original. I have more reason to care about this universe and these characters because of this follow up. It's given me more reason to care than I did before, by giving everyone more motivation for what has happened before. This is how you do a sequel ten-fold and this is how you make a fucking good film. It feels like an 80's college (romantic comedy) movie at times, this is exquisite work. Landon, you are on my director watch list. I see your name, I'm getting excited from now on.

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Jessica Rothe leads the follow-up to Blumhouse's surprise 2017 smash hit of riveting, repeating twists and comic turns. This time, our hero Tree Gelbman (Rothe) discovers that dying over and over was surprisingly easier than the dangers that lie ahead. Jason Blum once again produces, and Christopher Landon returns to write and direct this next chapter.

I don’t have a Happy Death Day review online, but I agree with the adjectives above-mentioned. It was one of last year’s surprises, and I genuinely had great fun with it. Overall, I would have rated it a B/B+, in case you’re wondering. But let’s get to its sequel and find out if it stood up to the original’s level…

Short answer: no. Not even close. Honestly, it even diminishes what the first one accomplished. The 2017 original flick was a refreshing surprise because it took a different concept and mixed a bunch of genres in an unexpectedly entertaining way. It was funny, imaginative and Jessica Rothe proved to be a star in the making. 2U just has Rothe. That’s it. Its comedy bits only worked a couple of times throughout the whole runtime, and there wasn’t a single scary sequence that didn’t remind me of thousands of other familiar scenes done better in other films.

This movie is simply an easy money-grab, and BlumHouse doesn’t mind if it doesn’t stand up to the original as long as it succeeds in the box office, which it already did. Unfortunately, that’s how Hollywood and the world of cinema works nowadays. If an unique and even risky film, one that was only planned to be a single installment, becomes a box office hit, chances are that a sequel is going to be produced, even if it has to wrongly retcon what happened in the original movie, consequently taking some of its value. This rarely works quality-wise, but I can’t deny that, as a marketing strategy, it’s very profitable for studios.

My main issue with Happy Death Day 2U is that it risks too much with no reasonable payoff. Story-wise, it has tons of logical incongruencies, and I don’t buy the ending, at all. Christopher Landon asks too much of the audience since we have to accept so much nonsense in order to actually enjoy the film. In the original movie, the only thing we needed to “go with” was the actual concept, but that was pretty clear from the get-go. In 2U, there’s a compelling and captivating moral dilemma at its core, but that same dilemma becomes less and less like one by the end of it. It’s still a complicated situation, but it’s like they forgot what was really important and went with other poorly explained route.

It doesn’t matter the genre from which you analyze this film. If you look at it as a comedy, you’ll barely laugh. If you think of it as a scary movie, you’ll never get scared. If you want to be intrigued by who the killer is this time around, you won’t be because the mystery is pretty straightforward. I really don’t want to rant on this film because I do love its cast and I really enjoyed the first movie, but it’s really hard not to be upset since it damages an eventual second viewing of the first one now. When the original installment doesn’t have an open door to other adventures, just don’t try to make a sequel for the sake of it. I know, I know… Money. Bah.

I don’t want to end this review on a sad note, so I left the brilliant cast to the end. Everyone is fantastic, and I hope that at least this film can catapult some of these actors into the spotlight, especially Jessica Rothe. She has a tremendous range of expressions and incredible ease in changing between emotions. She can look scared, sad and happy in a matter of seconds, with tears and all. She’s a full package. I hope that she can grab either a major role on a big TV series or a supporting role in a blockbuster or Oscar-bait movie in the next couple of years. Surely, Jason Blum has some plans for her.

All in all, Happy Death Day 2U does not deserve the box office success that it is having. It’s receiving a lot of credit due to the 2017 original’s surprise hit, and that’s unfair to the first installment. This sequel not only wrongly retcons unnecessary plot details of its predecessor, but it makes that correction its main plot, continuously reminding the audience that we just have to accept it. It’s not as funny, scary, unique or surprisingly entertaining as the original, and if the returning cast didn’t deliver strong performances, this would be one of the worst films of the year. Fortunately, there are a couple of good moments here and there, and Jessica Rothe alone saves the movie from a much more negative review.

Oh, and please, do NOT make a third one! Just leave it alone.

Rating: C-

A notable step down from the first _Happy Death Day_ but I was still pretty happy with this. There are some problems though. Calling it repetitive seems like a no-brainer, given the content, but it's not so much that _2U_ is doing mostly the same thing as the first one, as that it's doing the same thing as the first one, and that all of the things that are changed are **worse**. I didn't need an explanation or really much of anything that I saw in _2U_. But I guess something had to give if _Happy Death Day_ was going to get a sequel, and as I said, I didn't dislike this. I actually actively did like it. I just don't think it was up to the standard off the first, which even then, was good but not great.

Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole.

From the start, I was expecting the scenario would shift to another character, instead it went back to the main one from the first film.
Plus, when I heard this sequel was in development, I assumed the plot would focus on Lori trying and failing to kill Tree through the same hilarious scenario.

Still, this was an entertaining sequel.