Christopher Landon has delivered a fresh version of the same film with some smart twists, writes Jamie East
2017’s HAPPY DEATH DAY, with all its Groundhog Day meets Scream tropes, was a surprisingly fresh take on the slasher-horror genre and was rewarded by rave reviews and many dollars at the box office.
Its follow-up, bringing back all the cast and the spine of the original idea, but attempts to expand on the original premise with a hokum sci-fi sub-plot and a varnishing of comedy.
Whilst it works in places, the horror suffers. We begin with Ryan (you may remember as friend of Carter previously) suffering the same symptoms as Tree - namely having to live the same day over and over again - with it only being reset when they get brutally murdered by someone in a (proper horrible) baby mask.
After getting their heads together, the pair come to the conclusion it *may* have had something to do with the Science experiment he’s been working on (The Quantum Cooling Reactor - something I imagine most college students tinker with in between bongs and boners).
Before long, Tree finds herself back where she started - stuck in the *almost* same loop - to her extreme exasperation. She must, whilst trying to track down the identity of the new murderer, work out whether resetting the loop and sending her back to the other multiverse (Hello Spider-Man!) is what she really wants.
Credit where it's due - Christopher Landon has delivered a fresh version of the same film with some smart twists. What made the original so good for me though, was the “knowingness” of the performances - the tongue was firmly in cheek.
Here not only are those tongues poking out at you, but there also a banana skin and a rake looming dangerously close to their feet.
The scares were cheap (jumps rather than unease) and the comedy set-pieces cheaper (an awful segment involving a girl pretending to be blind was wince-inducing), but fans won’t feel too short-changed.
