‘Death Day’ sequel kills a couple of hours
Talk about getting stuck in a loop. “Happy Death Day 2U,” a disappointing sequel to the more amusing and novel 2017 Blumhouse sleeper hit “Happy Death Day,” once again features Jessica Rothe as the film’s timelooped heroine Tree Gelbman, a student at Bayfield University, who never goes to a class.
Instead, Tree goes on daylong adventures that always end in her violent murder. The sequel begins oddly with a “loop” involving Ryan Phan (Phi Vu), the quantum mechanics lab student, who helps create the machine that caused the anomaly that sent Tree on her adventures in “Happy Death Day.”
Soon, Tree and her friend Carter Davis (again Israel Broussard) are once again dealing with Tree’s time loop and a knife-wielding killer in a Bayfield “babyface” mask, who kills Tree at the end of every loop, sending her back to Carter’s dorm room to relive it all, unless she kills herself. There is a big difference in this new time loop, forcing Tree to face a difficult, tear-filled choice.
Did you get all that? It’s “Scream” meets “Back to the Future Part II,” never mind that the latter is a terrible film, and I never liked the former. Returning genrefilm director Christopher Landon (“Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones”), co- writing with Scott Lobdell of the original, is not afraid of a good, old-fashioned gay joke or having Danielle (Rachel Matthews), the film’s stereotypical sorority hottie, refer to a character named Samar Ghosh (Suraj Sharma), Ryan’s lab mate, as “Samosa.”
Once again, we get a montage of suicides by Tree played to the tune of a terrible pop song. In one bit, she jumps out of a airplane in her skivvies. In another, she chugs a bottle of “Liquid Python.” Don’t do this at home, kids.
In the new time loop, Carter and Danielle are romantically involved, something that makes Tree sick to her stomach (us, too).
Tree still meets her father for coffee because it’s her birthday. But there is a big difference. In one sequence Danielle mixes up Anne Frank and Helen Keller, while pretending to be blind for a part she’s playing. Yeah, it’s hilarious.
You may hear about the “multiverse” and algorithms in “Happy Death Day 2U.” But the film’s visuals suggest that Blumhouse didn’t pay the light bill. Interwoven throughout all of this familiar subject matter and bad slapstick comedy are gag-inducing cliches and platitudes about love.
As the film’s plucky heroine, Rothe remains a big plus. Almost everything else about “Happy Death Day 2U” is a minus.