By Melissa Antoinette Garza
YES! YES! Motherfucking YES!
Sorry, I’ve been waiting a minute for this movie to come out. I love it so. The original made my fucking year in 2017 and the sequel matched it for ’19. YES! I’m still not down from the high of seeing such a great film. This shit makes me giddy!
First things first – this is TOTALLY different than the original. Shockingly so! This isn’t really a horror or a slasher film. Those elements are there and there is a killer, but that’s not the focus. This film switches gears and is a sci-fi comedy with horror elements. Let me explain.
The film begins right where HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) ended. It’s the next day and Tree (Jessica Rothe) and new beau Carter (Israel Broussard) are about to have some fun when Carter’s roomie Ryan (Phi Vu) breaks thru the door. Come on, Ryan – at least let them get a little PG-13 action in. Damn you!
This time, Ryan’s the one reliving the same day over and over again. Someone is trying to kill him and he doesn’t know why. Badass fem Goddess Tree and sexy fem boy Carter jump in to help. They go to the room to apprehend the murderer, but OH FUCK – guess what. The murderer is RYAN! There are two motherfucking Ryans. One is from a parallel universe. We all know the rules of time travel and parallel universes. Two Ryan’s can’t exist at once. Each Ryan tries to get Tree and Carter to murder the other. It’s crazy, right?
Well, it gets crazier still. We find out why all this is going on! Ryan and his science buddies Samar (Suraj Sharma) and Andrea (Sarah Yarkin) built this machine and it’s malfunctioning! That’s what caused all the chaos the last time. Fucking brilliant! I love this. I’m giddy. This is new. This isn’t the same film at all. What the fuck is this? I love this! The characters are cute. The acting is great. I like this bunch of misfit nerds. I’d hang with them. Yeah, let’s do this!
Now the school has a dean who is a total prick. Dean Roger Bronson (Steve Zissis) is angry because this machine has caused a lot of school damage and is costing quite a bit of money. He goes to shut it down, but before he does Ryan uses it again and Tree is taken to a parallel dimension. WOOT motherfuckers, you didn’t see that coming! I didn’t anyways. Maybe you did – you could be smarter than me. I don’t know.
Things get even more bizarre. In this new universe, Carter is dating sorority bitch Danielle (Rachel Matthews). Usually I’d hate this character more than I do, but she reminds me of Nikki Bella so I just find myself smiling at her. I crush over the Bellas and so I like Danielle. She’s a fem. She’s a sneaky and spiteful little minx, but a gorgeous and fun fem. I don’t know. I like Tree better. I’d beat the shit out of Danielle to make Tree smile. Still, there is a part of me that just wishes both fems and Carter had a power three-way. That would have been icing on this already delicious cake.
Carter and Danielle rocking the nights away isn’t the only change. There’s a new killer going around. The psycho from the last film, Lori (Ruby Modine) is super cool now. She’s not a murderer and she’s sleeping with Gregory (Charles Aitken). He’s that toolbox professor that Tree was sweating up the sheets with in the first. If that wasn’t enough for Tree to deal with, her mother (Missy Yager) is now alive.
Tree needs to decide whether to stay in the universe where she has her mom back but doesn’t have Carter or to go home. Either way there’s a killer on the loose that she needs to defeat. Meanwhile, Carter joins forces with her and the science team to determine how to close the time loop. Each time she dies, Carter and the group don’t remember anything and she has to fill them in again. She becomes super smart and memorizes all these insane equations so that when they fail, the next time she can tell the group to skip that equation and go to the next – but there are so many variables and she keeps dying. Like the first, this takes the toll on the body.
In the end, we find out who the killer is and Tree makes some tough decisions. No spoilers on those fronts. Go see this right now.
There are scenes that will legit make you CRY like a baby. The scenes between Tree and her mom are gut-wrenching and I just adore Jessica Rothe. She is such a moving actress. Every emotion she feels, I feel with her. She’s plays Tree so nonchalant fierce with a sexy, jealous streak that I adore. She’s funny and I go gaga when she’s on. I love her so much that I hate to see her characters sad. She’s so pretty and she has the loveliest of smiles. I have a fem crush on her.
I also think that Israel Broussard is a fox! He just has this delightful grin and the camera always focuses on his dimples. Kudos to the director. I like Broussard. He’s sexy. He’s a great actor too. He pulls me in with the performance just like he did last time. The duo have so much chemistry between them. With fems I typically discuss talent first and lust after. With gents, I do the reverse. I like to switch it up as so many focus on the gorgeousness of women ahead of their talent, I go the opposite route. I can do that. I’m allowed. I wrote this article and you’re not my mom.
Overall, great fucking film. This is as good as the first. I hope the horror community doesn’t go crybaby bitch on this because it’s so different. Remember HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982). You all bitched & moaned because it was so different and now you all realize that I was right all along. That movie fucking rocks. I’m telling you that this one rocks too. It’s bad-ass. I love it. I love it so goddamn much. I want to go see it again right now. Maybe Universal will see this review and send me free tickets to Cinemark. That’s my nearby theater. Do it. Do it. Do it. Also, do it.
Scared Stiff Rating: 9/10
