Film of the Week: Happy Death Day 2U

The first was not only genre bending, but also time bending. It was funny, scary, and just complicated enough to be engrossed by its mystery. It sparked many theories as to why the time looped happened; the strongest of which stated the spirit of her mother trapped Tree into a time loop to save her daughter from being murdered on her birthday, which also was the day when Tree’s mother passed away. That theory, whilst wasn’t at all proven in the film, helped better flesh out our viewing experience.

Happy Death Day 2U was said to actually explain how she ended up in the time loop. With the first being a perfect balance between horror and satire, we were looking forward to seeing Tree’s journey continue. It turns out that it wasn’t her mother’s spiritual influence, but instead a scientific fluke. There was a part of all of us which hoped this to be the case, where Tree’s mother was responsible for saving her, but the fight continues and there’s only so much power her mother can provide. The first film practically offered that theory to us – we could dive deep into the film and point out moments where we believed her mother was directly responsible for starting the time loop. We, the audience, simultaneously wrote the extended lore of Happy Death Day, and now we finally get to see the lore continued - that theory come true. We were all wrong. Her mother was not responsible for any of the events, but instead a machine which didn’t do what was intended. I was caught between two trains of thoughts.

The disappointment of her mother’s lack of influence was mentioned in the film. Tree believed that her mother saved Tree from being murdered on her birthday, the same day her mother passed away. I was just as disappointed as Tree was because it would have been so beautifully poetic, but instead we get what can essentially be boiled down to as a failed science experiment – the cause of which most stories revolved around, and is essentially frowned upon as a cliché. “But that doesn’t make it mean any less, does it?”, Tree’s boyfriend asks, to which she responds with, “I guess not.”

We were all caught up with the belief it would be some cosmic reason, and can even point out moments which we can explain as blatant clues, for the sequel to turn all of that on its head, and for the main character to mention the same disappointment as we have only but cements the true nature of both films. By looking deep into the film and examining each frame and coming up with our own theories, we unintentionally strayed away from what the film was all about. Yes, it would have been poetic and we probably would feel quite a lot of satisfaction if confirmed in the sequel, but it wasn’t. Happy Death Day was meant to be different from “a time loop film”, “a horror film”, or “a satire, romantic film”. It was meant to be different by combining all three genres into one film and making it work, and how they made it work was rather genius. They the tree basic forms of all three genres and instead of tweaking them in some way, they literally just pushed them together. It isn’t just one of the basics, it’s all of them, and because it’s got all three elements bouncing off each other in perfect sync; we’re so used to looking into the finer details, we saw exactly what we wanted to see, not what was actually there.

Happy Death Day took the clichéd form of a time loop movie, a horror movie, a satire, romantic movie, and put all those clichés together to create something different. We didn’t see that, but instead more than what was intended, and therefore we were disappointed when the sequel came around. The sequel followed the same formulas, but added the basic, cliché science element into it – a scientific fluke. Making the character aware of this further enforces what the two films are truly about.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)