Howdy there, Scream Freaks, and Happy Valentine’s from all of us here at your favorite waterin’ hole for animated horror hostin’! While normal folks packed out fancy restaurants and fell out in diabetic comas from an overdose of sweet gestures, we spent our romantic evenin’ over bags of popcorn and smuggled red champagne in a dark movie theater. Yup, with our seats reclined all the way back in the last cineplex without assigned seatin’ in our parts, we enjoyed each other’s company and our own private screenin’ of Happy Death Day 2U!
If ya been keepin’ up with our R-Rated Review Blog these past few years, then you know we love the first Happy Death Day which is basically the horror version of Groundhog Day with a time limit for how many times a sorority bitch turned loveable last girl Tree can reboot her day before solvin’ her own murder. In Happy Death Day 2U, Tree learns a student’s science project is to blame for her temporal problems, and the doo-hickey throws her back into the same repeatin’ day all over again, but the twist this time is it’s now happenin’ in an alternate dimension with a different killer and outcomes. For an unprecedented sequel to a typical one and done kind of movie, this is just as fun to watch as the original, but is apples to oranges in comparison.
Understandably the filmmakers are ridin’ a fine line to keep such a familiar story fresh given the repetitive theme and end up steerin’ Happy Death Day 2U away from horror and closer to a sci-fi comedy. We’ve got no problem with that, of course, and are reminded of the twist and turns movies like the Evil Dead trilogy took from its hardcore horror beginnin’s to the fantasy adventure Army of Darkness endin’ up bein’. In fact, the characters even reference their situation to Back to the Future 2 which explains this Robert Zemeckis kind-of tonal shift, and echoes of Back to the Future’s theme in Happy Death Day 2U’s score.
The biggest reason why this ain’t as much of a horror as the first movie, however, is mainly ‘cause Tree’s not even the baby face killer’s target in this thing which robs the movie of that whole who-dunnit mystery thrill that was so engagin’ before. And what little murder mystery is revealed by the end is so bafflin’, we were shoutin’ in the theater for the filmmakers to take their asses back to the drawin’ board! So, without Tree needin’ to fight to stay alive, she spends the majority of the flick figurin’ out ways to close the time loop and stressin’ over which dimension she prefers to stay in which offers its own kind of tension, but not as much as someone avoidin’ an inevitable death sentence.
And without the killer sendin’ her back in time with every murder, it’s up to Tree to reset her own days with a music video montage of laughable suicides which raises its own questions. With every fatal reset, Tree’s body undergoes a form of trauma that diminishes her chances for respawnin’. She had no choice but to accept this toll on her life force when the killer was always catchin’ her in the first movie, but now that she’s not a predestined victim, why doesn’t she simply ride the day out instead of puttin’ herself at risk with all these needless suicides? We get she’s impatient to end the never endin’ day and laugh at every outrageous expiration she comes up with, but it just doesn’t make any sense when you think it through.
Despite these couple of forgivable sours, this is still a sweet follow-up to the first Happy Death Day we highly recommend fans of the first one see. It ain’t as scary or thrillin’, but it makes up for it with laughs and suspense with a amazin’ tour de France performance by Jessica Rothe as Tree that made us fall in love with her for the first time again.
Other than that, be sure to catch up on all past Screaming Soup! Seasons, check out this week’s Howl’n Hottie, read recent reviews for the newer horror films and comics we’re checkin’ out in our blogs, R-Rated Reviews and Sequential Slime, and help us get the word out about the web’s #1 animated horror host show! Please use our social buttons in the upper right corner of the site and follow our tweets, subscribe to our video channels, like our Facebook, watch and share all our vids, and keep that fan mail comin’. You can also warm up some Screaming Soup! leftovers with reruns currently playin’ on Beta Max TV and Sluggo’s The Vortexx!
For all you fearmakers out there workin’ on your next scary feature, remember to shoot it our way as an entry in our Scream Freak Film Contest! Three winners will be reviewed in our 50th episode and promoted to all the Scream Freaks lookin’ for the next big thing Hollywood’s too scared to capitalize on. The deadline is open ’til we publish our 49th episode!
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See ya later, Scream Freaks!
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