'Happy Death Day 2U' A Review

Happy Death Day 2U is scifi/slasher/comedy, a sequel to the 2017 sleeper hit. The movie opens on Ryan(Phi Vu) the roommate of Carter(Israel Broussard) the boyfriend of Tree(Jessica Rothe) as Ryan wakes up in his car, bursts in on his roommate and Tree, flees to his lab where he is working on a quantum reactor, later he is killed and relives the day over. Tree has just escaped the same problem and they pinpoint the reactor as the culprit. During a confrontation with the Dean the reactors goes off and shunts Tree into an alternate dimension where she is, once again, stuck reliving May 18th the same day as the original but this time everything she knows about her life is different.

Rothe once again brings her ease and charm to bear to shoulder the majority of the weight of the movie however this, unlike the predecessor, has a bit more of an ensemble feel focusing more on the machinations and minutia of time travel and the alternate worlds theory and less on the arc of Rothe's character Tree. This to the movie's somewhat detriment, Rothe is still the funny and resilient heart at the center of the story but isn't given full center stage and as such some of the infectious and intimate fun of the original is lost. The rest of the cast are all game, lightly charming, and keep the fun propulsive the emotional dimension (a supporting storyline but still apparent in the original) is mostly abandoned here. And the reality is it is Rothe's show and aside from a fun suicide montage and Sophie's Choice kind of after thought she isn't allowed to bring her full potential to bear.

A relatively low budget, fun, entertaining piece of genre bending that doesn't quite live up to the original.

Rent It.