Happy Death Day 2 U is an unnecessary sequel. The first film wasn’t that great to begin with and we’re quite frankly getting tired of the ‘dying and coming back’ concept. Yes, Bill Murray‘s Ground Hog Day will always be a classic but that’s as much as we can handle. Ok, we also rated Natasha Lyone’s quirky dying-and-coming-back Netflix series (read our review here) but that was the limit. The market for the concept is saturated and the only thing more boring than watching Jessica Rothe get murdered by cheesy masked villains in a poorly directed flick is watching it happen over and over again.
To disguise the sequel as a valuable add-on to the first film, the concept gets mixed up ever so slightly. We’re stuck in a different character’s endless dying-and-coming-back cycle and it’s the roommate of that guy that Tree (Jessica Rothe) was hooking up with in the last terrible movie. We bet you never saw that coming *face-palm*.
It also turns out that the reason it keeps happening is because of a science experiment gone wrong. Like really, what? Through ridiculous circumstances this then leads to Tree getting returned to her death day and the ‘fun’ starts all over again. Now we’ve seen a lot of inventive excuses to justify unnecessary sequels via the story but this really takes the cake.
The thing is, we could forgive a weak and convoluted plot if there was a fun slasher feel to it. There’s a reason Sharknado reached legendary status and no, it’s not for the script, imagination or direction. Slashers are fun to watch with friends but unfortunately, the deaths in Happy Death Day 2 U are less Final Destination and more Finally.. it’s over. There’s less blood and horror and it shapes up to be some kind of weird sci-fi bad comedy.
Of all the film’s failures, the worst has got to be the post-credit sequence which hints at a third film. It shouldn’t be done, we don’t want it to be done and watching Happy Death Day sequels is just about as painful as dying on loop for all of eternity.
0.5/5
