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I enjoyed Happy Death Day. I didn't think it was great, but I came to like it more on a second viewing. I was happy to see the trailer for a sequel, since it looked like it was expanding in a direction that could make things wonderfully complicated.
This movie is... bonkers.
As we start, we get a different person caught in a time loop. Then it turns out that he has a duplicate. Somehow, an effort to fix that problem results in Tree being swapped into a parallel reality where her mother is still alive, but she doesn't have her boyfriend. The boyfriend is now coupled with an annoying sorority friend of hers.
A lot of that comes out within the first 20 minutes.
I was much more happy with this movie than I expected, for a few different reasons.
It doesn't try to spend too much time recapping the first movie. It goes through everything of importance in probably less than a minute.
It doesn't try to replicate the plot of the first one, with the exception that she wants to find a way to end the loop.
It embraces the absurdity of everything. This movie stretches the genre much further than expected.
The first movie also wasn't much of a horror movie. There were horror elements, but they tended to fade as the rest of the story got more interesting. I would estimate that the first movie was maybe 30% horror. This one, probably closer to 10%.
This isn't a problem. We would be left with a much more frustrating movie if they tried to keep it scary somehow.
There are legitimate problems - the girl pretending to be blind seemed almost cringeworthy. She figures out who the killer is without much effort. On the other hand, how much of a problem is that, if we really don't care who it is?
This isn't for everyone, especially those who expect a stronger horror element. In the meantime, it's really fun, and remarkably self-aware, which gives it a lot of flexibility and freedom to push the boundaries.
score 8/10
jdollak 19 February 2019
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4674431/ |
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1-12-2019 18:01:18
