HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019)

Studio:      Blumhouse
Director:    Christopher Landon
Writer:      Christopher Landon
Producer:  Jason Blum
Stars:     Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Rachel Matthews, Suraj Sharma, Charles Aitken, Phi Vu, Ruby Modine, Steve Zissis, Sarah Yarkin, Laura Clifton, Missy Yager

Review Score:

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Summary:

After the cause of the original time loop is uncovered, Tree Gelbman finds herself reliving her death day once again, but on an alternate timeline.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Carter Davis’ roommate Ryan Phan wakes in his car on Tuesday the 19th. Ryan walks across campus to his room to find Carter with Tree Gelbman after she successfully broke her time loop.

In the school’s quantum mechanics lab, Ryan continues work with fellow science students Samar Ghosh and Andrea ‘Dre’ Morgan on their experimental quantum reactor intended to slow time with photon lasers. Angry that they have been causing power outages across campus, Dean Roger Bronson shuts down the project.

Ryan follows mysterious texts to a storage closet in an empty lab. A hooded murderer masked as Babyface suddenly kills Ryan.

Ryan wakes in his car. Ryan realizes he is reliving Tuesday the 19th as he experiences the same series of events while walking back to his room.

Ryan tells Carter and Tree about his murder and subsequent déjà vu. Tree recaps her ‘death day’ experience while theorizing that she somehow passed the time loop to Ryan.

After discovering no one hiding in the storage closet, Ryan, Carter, and Tree discuss the experimental quantum reactor with Samar and Dre. Although she is disappointed to learn that her experience was caused by a science project malfunction instead of closure regarding her mother’s death, Tree explains to Ryan that he must close the time loop.

To hide from the new killer in a public space, everyone attends a Bayfield University basketball game. A fire drill forces the arena to evacuate. Babyface pursues Ryan through utility tunnels. Tree rescues Ryan and unmasks Babyface to reveal a second Ryan.

Restrained to a chair in the science lab, the second Ryan frantically warns that Ryan Prime must die because he will only make the time loop worse. Ryan Prime hurriedly activates the quantum device in order to kill his doppelganger. Dean Bronson barges into the lab with two security guards to forcibly shut down the project. The reactor emits a powerful pulse that knocks everyone to the floor.

Tree wakes up in Carter’s room on Monday the 18th. When Ryan enters, Tree frustratingly screams that he needs to activate his reactor and send her back to the 19th. Tree, Ryan, and Carter walk across campus with Tree seeing events as they were the previous 12 times. Upon reaching her sorority house however, Tree realizes that things are slightly different.

Ryan briefly explains the multiverse theory while proposing that Tree may be in a different dimension. In this timeline, Lori Spengler is not trying to kill Tree and Carter is dating lead sorority sister Danielle Bouseman. When she attends her birthday lunch with her father David, Tree also delightedly discovers that her mother is still alive in this reality.

Because her mother is alive, Tree returns to the science lab to say she does not want the reactor reactivated. Tree also spots Doctor Gregory Butler arguing with his wife Stephanie.

Later that night, Tree sees a news report about serial killer John Tombs being at the university hospital. Tree rushes to the hospital to warn everyone about Tombs, but ends up handcuffed by the police officer stationed outside Tombs’ room.

Babyface suddenly kills the officer. Tree runs. Lori rescues Tree by escorting her into an elevator. Lori explains that Babyface cannot be Tombs because she just took him to OR. The two women hide on a floor under construction. Babyface kills Lori. Babyface chases Tree to the roof where she accidentally falls to her death.

Tree wakes on Monday the 18th again. After she recounts everything for Ryan, Carter, Samar, and Dre, the science students confirm that they can get the reactor running to send Tree back to her timeline. However, it will require a trial and error process where Tree has to memorize failed algorithms each time she relives the day. Carter proposes repeatedly committing suicide to avoid confronting Babyface.

Tree begins a cycle of helping the team solve equations while dying by bathtub electrocution, drinking Drano, skydiving in a bikini, and jumping into a wood chipper. Tree continues to be turned off by Carter and Danielle’s romance while also noticing Dr. Butler arguing with Lori.

Tree wakes on the 18th after jumping from a clock tower. Tree passes out from the mounting pain of repeatedly dying.

While she recovers in the hospital, Tree warns Dr. Butler that someone is going to kill Lori. Tree gets the police officer’s gun to go after the killer herself. Tree finds Lori dead. Babyface attacks. Tree shoots Babyface and unmasks him as Tombs. However, a second Babyface attacks. Tree shoots canisters of flammable gas to kill herself and the second Babyface.

On the next loop, the science students conclude there is only one algorithm remaining. However, a hard drive corruption forces Ryan to spend several hours manually reentering code. Faced with a choice of where she wants to be when both time loops close, Tree decides to remain in the current dimension.

Tree tells Carter that they are in a relationship on the other timeline, but she chooses to remain with her mother instead. Carter challenges Tree to consider the consequences of living a life that isn’t truly hers and posits that her experience with grief helped shape her into the person she became.

Concerned about the killer while waiting for the reactor to come online, Tree convinces her parents to get away to a motel with her. Tree’s mother mentions an endearing memory that Tree doesn’t have. Tree has an intimate conversation with her mother about having to choose between two loves.

A newsflash on TV reports that Lori, Carter, and the police officer were killed at the hospital. Unable to contact Ryan by phone to shut down the reactor before reality becomes permanent, Lori races her father’s car into a transformer at the Bayfield Electrical Substation, killing herself while causing a blackout.

On the next loop, Tree decides to return to her proper reality. While Ryan readies the reactor, Tree advises Lori to end her affair with Dr. Butler. Tree also discovers Danielle is cheating on Carter with Nick Sims. Tree then has a final heart-to-heart conversation with her mother at their birthday lunch.

Dean Bronson confiscates the reactor before Ryan and the others can activate it. Believing she is getting too weak to die again, Tree insists that they have to steal the device back.

The group enlists Danielle to act like a blind foreign exchange student in order to distract Dean Bronson and steal his keys. Tree and the others successfully recover the reactor.

While Ryan readies the device, Tree goes to the hospital to rescue Lori from Tombs. However, a second Babyface confronts the two roommates. Tree prompts Babyface to remove his mask by outing him as Doctor Butler. Tree explains to Lori that Gregory wants Lori dead to bury evidence of their affair.

Claiming she wasn’t going to let Lori ruin her life, Gregory’s wife Stephanie reveals she is in league with her husband when she suddenly shoots Lori. Gregory then double-crosses his wife by shooting her. Carter arrives to distract Gregory before he can shoot Tree.

Dr. Butler chases Tree to an exam room with an MRI machine. Tree activates the MRI’s magnetic field, which pulls Gregory against the machine. Tree releases a screwdriver that she brought with her. The tool flies toward the machine and stabs Gregory through his heart. Lori survives her gunshot wound.

Tree and Carter return to the lab as Ryan starts the reactor. Samar and Dre fight off Dean Bronson and two security guards trying to disable the device. Tree and Carter kiss as the reactor activates and sends Tree back to her Tuesday the 19th.

Tree, Carter, Ryan, Samar, and Dre clean up trash across campus as punishment for the reactor explosion. Dr. Isaac Peters arrives with a fleet of vans to escort the five students to a DARPA laboratory. Dr. Peters shows them that DARPA has the quantum reactor and he wants their help operating it. Tree volunteers Danielle as a test subject.

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Review:

Two things are essential to know before tuning in to “Happy Death Day 2U’s” peculiarly fluctuating frequency.

First, familiarity with “Happy Death Day” (review here) plays a key role in squeezing maximum entertainment value out of the follow-up, arguably more so than any other predecessor/sequel pairing. A breathless “Friday the 13th”-style recap conveniently condenses the first film’s 96 minutes into a 30-second montage. Still, it would be incredibly difficult to keep up with recurring characters and events if you’re otherwise in the dark regarding what came before. Refreshing your memory with a recent re-watch is additionally recommended, as it will amplify appreciation for the painstaking detail that went into recreating costumes, sets, and staging to look exactly like everything did last time.

But the most important thing to acknowledge is that whereas “Happy Death Day” was a snarky slasher whodunit, “Happy Death Day 2U” is a fully comedic sci-fi caper movie. Off the top of my head, I’m having a hard time thinking of a “horror” franchise, if that term even fits this series anymore, that saw this wild of a shift in tone from one installment to the next. The disparate direction won’t be everyone’s cup of chamomile, for good reason, but bracing expectations for the impact may at least prevent whiplash from exacerbating negative reactions.

Remember Carter’s roommate Ryan? The guy who barged in on Tree’s ordeal every morning by crudely asking if Carter had tapped that “fine vagine?” In a move that’s actually ingenious, “Happy Death Day 2U” plucks this negligible nobody, whose only purpose was to facilitate a repeating gag, out of background obscurity and catapults him into a major player.

It turns out Ryan is a science student at Bayfield University. Partnering with classmates Samar and a redundant girl whose name we only know from end credits, Ryan developed a quantum reactor to experiment with pausing time. It’s his device that has been causing rolling blackouts across campus, much to irritable Dean Bronson’s fist-shaking chagrin.

In the first of the film’s controversial creative choices, Ryan’s reactor also ends up identified as the cause of Tree’s time-loop conundrum. Rarely does the tactic of retroactively writing an origin story pay off. Just ask the stakeholders who made a mess out of Michael Myers’ mystique starting in 1981. Nevertheless, “Happy Death Day 2U” risks jumping the shark on only its second wave by offering an explanation audiences weren’t quite clamoring for.

If you’re peeved that the sequel provides a pseudo-science rationale for how “Happy Death Day” happened, you’re not alone. Tree can’t hide her disappointment that a laboratory fluke, not the necessity for emotional closure over her mother’s death, compelled her to become a better person by dying 11 times. She has more immediate worries however. The two key killers from “Happy Death Day” remain dead, but there’s a new masked menace on the loose. Curiously, this murderer couldn’t care less about Tree. Babyface part deux wants Ryan to receive the business end of a blade.

Ryan doesn’t remain the focal point for long. Being as vague as possible to sidestep spoilers, Ryan activates his reactor to deal with his own repeating death day. This has the unanticipated side effect of forcing Tree to yet again relive the terrible time loop she thought she left behind yesterday.

Except this timeline seems different. New beau Carter now dates flighty sorority sister Danielle. Lori appears confused at the mention of cupcakes. Tree is still Tree, but this is not the same Monday the 18th she lived through a dozen times before.

Finding herself inexplicably transported to an alternate dimension, Tree not only has to unmask a new Babyface killer, she has to find a way back to her rightful reality. To do that, she needs Ryan and his ragtag team of science nerds to work their reactor magic. Trouble is, while Tree remembers what happened each time she repeats her new death day, everyone else starts from scratch. Tree needs to step up her mathematics and her memory if she wants to avoid the killer and return home. And when the new timeline presents a possibility she cannot have in her dimension, she has to choose if she even wants to return to her reality at all.

Here’s something I really like about how writer/director Christopher Landon, taking creative reins entirely from previous scripter Scott Lobdell, snaps fingers at his own script. Keeping the pace perpetually peppy, Ryan, Carter and company never waste time questioning Tree’s crazy claims. Obviously, she gets everyone up to speed about new time-loop revelations offscreen. As far as Tree is concerned though, you have to imagine that her story about repeating deaths, masked murderers, and exploding quantum reactors grows crazier and crazier each time she tells it. And yet everyone she tells it to is always immediately eager to try sending her back to the future.

Speaking of Marty McFly and Doc Brown, Bear McCreary intentionally composes many music cues to echo Alan Silvestri’s “Back to the Future” scores. The parallels ring repeated bells in ways that are overtly, maybe even obnoxiously, humorous as much as they are earnest homage. They may as well have cut to end credits on a Huey Lewis song while they were at it.

This brings me to something perplexing about how Christopher Landon directs his movie. “Happy Death Day 2U” overloads on questionably placed comedy that goes so far over the top, it does a 360-degree loop and comes back around to quizzical looks on the faces of viewers who thought they were in for a thriller.

Which isn’t to say that “Happy Death Day 2U” doesn’t have plentiful thrills, chills, and spills. It’s just that its style drowns in a sea of slapstick, pratfalls, and exaggerated outrageousness that would better fit an “I Love Lucy” rerun than a sequel to a slasher, even one that wasn’t 100% serious to begin with.

Steve Zissis as the bug-eyed “I’m gonna git you kids!” dean and Rachel Matthews as Danielle straight up mimic a Three Stooges routine in their Merry Melodies-inspired scene together. Tree’s bikini skydiving sequence punctuates itself with a moment manufactured just for laughs at the expense of exclaiming, “plausibility is going out a fourth floor window and we are not remotely worried about it.”

When the movie ended, my girlfriend remarked that she identified the new killer immediately. Not because she tried to, but because there were so few suspects, only one possibility made sense. Myself, I was so distracted by the heist orchestrated to rob the dean’s office, the ongoing hijinx of Ryan’s wack pack, and Tree’s assorted asides of organizing affairs with her parents, sorority sisters, and everyone else, I flat out forgot there was a killer yet to be unmasked in the movie.

While weird creative choices can be questioned, something not up for debate is Jessica Rothe earning her second straight MVP trophy as the undisputed standout. Predominantly burdened with an awful lot of manic buffoonery, Rothe gets to do authentic acting in scenes where she only interacts with Tree’s mother. One moment in particular is a complete audition reel in just two minutes, exceptionally showcasing Rothe’s full range of extraordinary emotive talents. If the overall movie had a similar handle on appropriately adjusting hectic temperatures, it might not seem so all over the place.

In addition to ‘The Explanation Problem’ of Landon’s script thinking it needs to build a sequel by finagling the first film’s fiction, “Happy Death Day 2U” resorts to some tired tricks like a hand on a shoulder jump scare and a villain doing a slow clap “bravo!” when Tree finally ties up loose ends. A number of things aren’t quite “right” about the movie, yet that doesn’t make it any easier to quantify with a numeric value.

I suspect that my 65/100 score could change by 20 points in either direction depending on the mood of a given day. Did “Happy Death Day 2U” entertain me? Mostly, although some of that has to do with how impressive I found its chutzpah to be. The constant complainer in me who wants to see bold inventiveness in genre films commends the creators for having the guts to risk an uncharted course. The fan of the first film who wanted a second serving isn’t sure they made the correct call by teetering the totter away from horror and toward humor.

We’ll certainly see a third “Happy Death Day” at some point. Where it goes is for anyone to guess, probably including the series’ stewards. It remains to be seen if they inadvertently Halloween II’ed themselves into a continuity corner where they’ll be chasing fractured fiction with future installments. Then again, given Blumhouse’s history with “Halloween” (review here), we could see a retconned reboot of “Happy Death Day 2U” in 40 years time.

Review Score: 65

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