Happy Death Day 2U Parent Guide

In Happy Death Day 2U, Jessica Rothe reprises her role as Theresa “Tree” Gelbman, a young college student who recently escaped a lethal time loop by realizing that her roommate was trying to kill her all along. Now safely in “tomorrow”, Tree believes she is safe. That is, until fellow student Ryan Phan (Phi Vu) starts fiddling with his high-powered science project, launching her not only into another time loop, but into a separate dimension. In this dimension, not only are she and her boyfriend not together, but her roommate never tried to kill her, and her mother is still alive. With a little help from Ryan and some other science majors, Tree might be able to get back to her own dimension: but will she even want to? And what would the costs be of staying? While Tree puzzles out her moral dilemma, a new killer stalks the campus…

The best way to describe this film to anyone who hasn’t seen the original Happy Death Day is that it’s Groundhog Day meets Scary Movie. Thankfully, however, Happy Death Day 2U manages to avoid some of the exceptionally explicit and coarse humor of the latter and sticks to a more darkly funny tone. I hadn’t seen the first one when I walked in, and I was expecting a mindless, sophomoric slasher flick. What I got was a surprisingly heartfelt dark comedy with a strong emotional core and a few half decent laughs in between. Jessica Rothe brings a lot of spirit to the film and manages to squeeze some actual emotion into what is otherwise a remarkably silly plot. By balancing the dark comedy with genuine emotion, Happy Death Day 2U, while still not a spectacular film, becomes pretty darn watchable.

Parental concerns are fairly obvious, with a laundry list of comedic (but still somewhat gruesome) violent scenes and a similar list of profanities. That said, as far as horror comedies go, this one dodges a lot of the typical genre concerns. There is almost no sex whatsoever, beyond the usual college couples making out, and not a single scene involving drugs or alcohol. Unusually for movies set on campus, Happy Death Day 2U actually has less sex, alcohol, and swearing than any real college campus. Although it probably isn’t terribly appropriate for younger teens, and certainly not for children, this would work well mature teens with a taste for horror movies, and is certainly one of the more palatable entries in the genre.

While this isn’t going to redefine your expectations of either comedy or horror, this movie does manage to be entertaining (and only minimally irritating) for its hundred-minute runtime. More importantly, it gives the audience some genuine emotions to deal with, which not only grounds the fun and spunky protagonist in what is otherwise a rather goofy movie, but keeps the audience from getting burned out on either its darker jokes, or its sillier set-piece gags.