Get Happy

Happy Death Day (2017) has been getting some random good buzz, so we queued it up. We liked it so much we watched the sequel.

It starts with Jessica Roche waking up in someone else’s dorm room. Her dad is calling on her cell (it’s her birthday), and she is very hung over. Israel Broussard, whose room it is, is a little nervous and a bit geeky. She isn’t enjoying her morning. She insults Broussard’s Asian roommate on her way out. She walks home through a series of memorable but unimportant scenes. We find out that she is a member of a mean girls sorority, where she gets shamed for staying out all night, but her roommate, Ruby Modine, tries to be nice and gives her a cupcake for her birthday. Roche throws it in the trash.

Later that night, on her way to a party, she is lured into a tunnel and has her throat slashed by someone in a baby face mask - the face of the college mascot. Then she wakes up in Broussard’s room again.

Yes, this is Scream meets Groundhog’s Day. Confused, she walks out of his room and heads home, seeing the same memorable sequence as the day before. And even though she avoids going out, the killer was waiting for her in her room and kills her again.

After a few times around, she starts eliminating suspects - tracking them until she’s sure it’s not them then killing herself to wake up again in the same place. But each death costs her something, and she may not have many lives left.

This is a good premise, written by Scott Lobdell,and well-executed by director Chris Landon. The best part is Roche as a mean girl who gets better. Her mother died a little while ago, and that is what has got her acting like a jerk. We get to see her hung over, smug, confused, scared, opening up, and kicking ass. Her relation to Broussard is also very sweet. And it ends with the discovery that she has never even heard of Groundhog’s Day.

For the sequel, Happy Death Day 2U, we start with Broussard’s roommate, Phi Vu, waking up in his car, and going back to his room, where Roche and Broussard are together. It’s the day after the events of the first movie. Vu is pissed at being kicked out of his room. But there’s something going on with his thesis project, a particle accelerator. His team has started to get positive results, but the dean is closing him down. He hears some funny noises, and heads off to investigate, and gets killed by Babyface. And wakes up in his car. Now, it’s happening to him.

At least, when he tells Roche and Broussard that he’s getting deja Vu, they know what’s going on. It’s also obvious that the particular accelerator is what caused the time loops. I won’t tell who is trying to kill Vu, but will let you know that the curse gets transferred to Roche, and she is waking up in Broussard’s bed again, on her birthday. Now she’s desperate to get back to her old life, until she discovers that her mother is alive in this universe.

In some ways, this is a straight continuation of the previous movie. We get more of some of the characters, including Broussard, Vu (and a team of physics nerds) and the mean girls of the sorority. We get Broussard stretching herself to save the day, again. And in the end, it turns out that Roche has never heard of the sequel to Back to the Future.

Then there’s another ending. On our disc, this is followed by some outtakes. It was very difficult to tell if the darn thing ever ended. Since there probably won’t be a second sequel, that will have to do.