Movie Review: 'Happy Death Day 2 U' A Solid Follow Up to Clever Original

Happy Death Day was a breath of fresh, comic, air in the horror genre in 2017 and because it was a financial success, as well as a critical success, we knew a sequel was coming. That sequel arrived two years later under the title Happy Death Day 2U. The cast returns with Jessica Rothe back in the lead role as Tree Gelbman, a woman who survived being trapped in a deathly time loop.

The question about the sequel then was how would they revamp and relaunch the franchise which ended the first film in a seemingly definitive fashion. That’s answered straight away in Happy Death Day 2U which seeks not just to create a new premise for Tree and company but to answer the question that went unanswered in the original: How did Tree end up in that Groundhog Day but with murder scenario?

Happy Death Day 2U begins with Ryan (Phi Vu), an obnoxious side character in the original, finding himself trapped in a time loop. Ryan has been working on time travel as part of his education and has been working on a machine that theoretically opens other dimensions in time. After Ryan is murdered by someone wearing a babyface mask, Ryan tells Tree and his roommate Carter what is happening to him and Tree explains that she already knows

It was Ryan’s machine that caused Tree’s previous loop. She wants to now help Ryan break his loop by surviving the day and or killing the person in the Baby mask. Unfortunately, this will not be that easy. Ryan’s machine has created a series of dimensions with different realities and when that loop is broken, Tree finds herself once again in her old loop. There is one difference however, in this loop, Tree’s beloved mother is alive. But also, she and Carter (Israel Broussard) are not together.

As Tree goes about dying to protect her friends while Ryan works to create a stable dimension minus all the murder, Tree must wrestle with whether she wants to stay in the dimension where her mom is alive, thus displacing another version of herself from this happy reality, or whether she will return to her own dimension, without her mother but with the love of Carter and the existence she’s knows is her own.

The time loop in the original Happy Death Day went happily unexplained and because the movie is so much fun that no one really minded. The appeal of that film came not from the gimmick but from star Jessica Rothe whose performance is an absolute delight. Rothe is also the best element of Happy Death Day 2U as she brings a weary annoyance at having been dragged back into this loop I loved the absurdity of her being so blase in the face of the horrors everyone else is facing seemingly for the first time for them.

But the movie doesn’t rest there as we get a dramatic arc for Tree in her relationship to her late mother. In the original we found that Tree could be rude, thoughtless and superficial and that these traits came into existence as a reaction to the death of her mother. The sequel places Tree’s entire world on its ear by introducing a world where Tree always had her mother and it raises questions about identity, nature vs nurture and moral questions about the cost of getting what you want.

That’s a lot of heavy subjects for a horror comedy but Happy Death Day 2U proves light and deft in spite of all that is in play in the story. That, again, has a great deal to do with Jessica Rothe who can toggle between comedy and drama with ease. Rothe is just a wonderful actress, a leading lady with presence and charisma and comic chops. The rest of the cast is quite good as well but Rothe is the reason that Happy Death Day 2U succeeds.

I wasn’t sure if there was anything to be done with the premise Happy Death Day after that first movie ended so definitively but I came away from the sequel impressed with how strange and daring director Christopher Landon was in finding a way to continue this story. It may not improve on the original, but it can stand next to it and it is strong enough that if they were to continue making Happy Death Day movies, I would be up for that.

That is qualified by the idea that Jessica Rothe must continue to be the star.