The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Just because a filmmaker attempts to evoke a specific emotion or genre, does not mean they will succeed, and the audience will notice. Happy Death Day 2U proves this time and again with multiple failed attempts at being scary, funny, or entertaining.

Happy Death Day 2U is a sequel to the feature Happy Death Day. Tree (Jessica Rothe) gets stuck in the time loop again, reliving February the 18th over and over (again), but in this dimension, things are very different; her boyfriend Carter (Israel Broussard) is now with someone else, and her mum is alive. She finds out that Carter’s friend Ryan (Phi Vu) has been accidentally messing with time in a science project he is working on, and now Tree has to die every day until they can figure out how to take her back to her own dimension. But will she want to go back?

If you have watched the first the film, you know this is basically the same plot with a few added twists. If you haven’t, there is a quick recap at the beginning of the sequel. So, there’s really no need to watch the first film, or the second.

The sequel takes an already absurdly overdone plot and overdoes it again, just this time with many more (supposedly) funny moments and shocking twists, which are not shocking but entirely predictable.

The makers of Happy Death Day and its sequel need to understand that watching someone kill themselves over and over again in different ways is not, and should not be, funny. Yes, comedy doesn’t always have to stick to “right and wrong”, but whether or not it is right, it yields the same result of very little laughter.

When your first guess at what will happen in a film is what happens, then you know there was not enough work done to hide the twist or make it sophisticated. Let’s just say it won’t be too hard for you to guess who the killer is, what Tree will choose, and even the film’s ending.

Even the added emotional aspect of choosing between her mother and her boyfriend is so rushed and overshadowed by the silliness of the film that the audience barely get to feel anything.

For the acting, Jessica Rothe’s performance was very uneven with overdone angry scenes supposedly for comedic effect, and very underdone emotional scenes, which may also be due to the plot’s rushing. Israel Broussard and Phi Vu had much smaller roles and were able to play them adequately.

The only real reason to watch Happy Death Day 2U is if you loved the first one and you would like to see it again.