HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U
The Happy Death Day series is great. I’m big into them. The premise of the first movie is “What If Groundhog Dog was a teen slasher and every time she dies, she comes back to life” and the sequel, 2U, is a riff on Back To The Future 2. They’re both a lot of fun, if not exactly subtle – both movies have characters say the film they’re referencing out loud. “Wow, this is just like in Back to the Future 2.” Which, to be fair, is the exact sort of thing 16-year-old me would have been absolutely horny for. Teenage me loved being told exactly what was being referenced, which is why teenage me loved the second season of Spaced so much. “Holy shit! The Matrix is a movie I have also seen!”
Both movies are breezy, goofy, high-concept horrors that don’t take themselves particularly seriously. They’re the opposite of those Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes. You know, where those movies are like “we hate these characters, we hate you for watching this, we hope you have a bad time and feel bad.” The Happy Death Days are always like “hey, good for you for slouching on the couch, have this, this will distract your brain for a bit.”
Jessica Rothe plays Tree who spends chunks of both movies running around her college campus reliving the same events over and over again. She gets killed, but that’s when her day restarts. Sometimes she’ll kill herself. Honestly, it is a surprisingly breezy romp for a movie that includes a lot of homicide and suicide.
The director, Christopher Landon, went on to direct Freaky which is “what if Freaky Friday was about a serial killer swapping bodies with a teenage girl?” And honestly, I hope that he makes two dozen horror movies that are riffs on comedy tropes. Give me horror Multiplicity where Michael Keaton duplicates himself a whole bunch, or horror What Women Want about a creep who can read women's minds, or horror Liar Liar about a psycho who pursues a career in law. Anyway, please employ me to stand in rooms pitching these ideas to studio execs. That's a job, right?
Where would I fit in all of this? Well, to signal to the audience that Tree is living the same day over and over she’ll often bump into a series of very minor characters all doing the same thing each time – think Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day – and there’s no reason to think that I couldn’t have an incredibly minor role where I do the same thing day after day.
IF I WERE IN 'HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U' I WOULD: NOT SPILL THAT BURRITO, BUT DEFINITELY SPILL ANOTHER BURRITO THAT I HAVE LATER THAT DAY BECAUSE DESPITE HAVING A BURRITO FOR BREAKFAST I FELT LIKE ANOTHER BURRITO FOR DINNER BUT I JUSTIFIED IT TO MYSELF BECAUSE THAT BURRITO IN THE MORNING WAS A BREAKFAST BURRITO AND THIS BURRITO FOR DINNER HAS CHICKEN IN IT AND THEY’RE BASICALLY TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MEALS
