Movie Review: Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

The movie stars Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Phi Vu, Rachel Matthews and Missy Yager.

I wasn't a big fan of the original Happy Death Day, mostly because I thought that movie was way too predictable and had a few too many plot holes. And, I'm not 100 percent sure why I even bothered putting the sequel on my Netflix DVD queue. However, we received it this week and my wife and I decided to take the time to watch it last night. Surprisingly, I didn't hate this movie.

I thinking having Tree (Rothe) in a different dimension rather than just casting her back into the original time loop was an excellent touch because it made the movie a whole lot less predictable. In the original, her roommate (Ruby Modine) was obviously the killer, something my wife figured out literally minutes into that film. This movie made the killer not quite as clear and, since she was in a different dimension and the people she knew weren't quite the same, it could be almost everyone.

I'm still a little undecided about Tree being forced to make a decision between staying in her current dimension, where her mom (Yager) is still alive but Carter (Broussard) isn't her boyfriend or returning to her normal dimension. This is mostly because there was nothing to indicate she wouldn't eventually win Carter's heart again, allowing her to have both (especially since he seemed to be falling for her). However, I think I'm going to give that a pass because I can understand why she would also consider leaving a dimension where her "memories" never actually happened to her.

One thing I was not a big fan of, however, was the decision to have her avoid the killer by committing suicide over and over again. This simply did not make a lot of sense logically. Not only should Tree already know each death would make her weaker, she was, at the time at least, planning on staying in the same dimension. It would have made more sense for her to try to stop the killer (who wasn't even after her, giving her the element of surprise), break the time loop and then worry about fixing the machine.

I also thought the movie left a couple questions unanswered, including why Ryan (Vu) had a duplicate and who turned on the machine in the first place. I can only assume that will eventually be explained in part 3 if/when it is released. Otherwise, it's a pretty gaping hole.

The movie wasn't perfect. But, I did find I liked it a lot more than the first film and my wife and I did enjoy it as a result.

My Grade: B