Happy Death Day 2U

Flawed sequel abandons the first film’s giallo trappings in favor of a Back to the Future Part II style sci-fi comedy. But director Christopher Landon’s script explains too much, then trips over its own rules.

This entry sees our lead, Tree, reliving the first film, albeit in another dimension, one where her mother never died. A reasonable premise with a good twist. But this entry also proffers several tone-deaf comedy bits such as one character pretending to be blind and French to distract the stereotypical college-comedy dean. Worse still, the script glosses over what happened to this dimension’s Tree, which frames all the characters as either idiots or merciless.

It’s not a total burn. As Tree, Jessica Rothe carries the film with a magnetic performance. And I loved the sequence where she takes her own life in a montage of increasingly over-the-top ways. It’s the kind of black humor the first film lacked and it had me laughing out loud.