Director: Christopher Landon
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Moving on from the previous day, a strange accident forces Tree to confront the realization that she’s back in the same fateful day where she gets killed only in a slightly different dimension, causing her to find a way of using her friends to get to her world while avoiding the killer still on her trail.
Review:
This was a decent enough if decidedly lowered sequel. One of the film’s best aspects is the decided focus on exploring what happened to instigate the incidents from the previous film. The revelation of the existence of the reactor, originally intended to provide things with an alternate energy supply but instead creates the access point to enter the separate dimension, manages to offer up a somewhat compelling and rational meaning to start all over again once they realize this is happening. With small touches to note how everything has been flipped around while still utilizing the same basic formula is a nice sense of world-building into this new universe, this is at least worthwhile of accomplishing that factor.
The other enjoyable element here is the rather fun and tense stalking scenes. There’s a great hint of suspense to come from the repeated attempts to live the same day out, giving the scenes in the lab or the corridors under the basketball stadium where they confront the killer in the darkened hallways has a lot to like. As well, the series of encounters in the hospital where he continually gets into confrontations and chases through the different rooms and hallways offers a sense of fun about it featuring plenty of exciting action with her crazy schemes to kill herself and the tense stalking. The big finale, working with the dual plotlines of trying to unravel the killers’ motivations while also trying to get the machine to work back at the lab has plenty of tense high-energy fun and tension in the confrontations as well as some twists along the way, giving this a lot to like about it.
There are a few minor factors to this one. The main problem here is the entirely forced and clumsy manner this one turns around the loop from the friend to her, which was one of the more original concepts at play here. Knowing how to play out the particular pratfalls and conditions of reliving the day over again would’ve been a far more interesting subject to explore, especially once the idea of realizing that they’re in the alternate universe where they wouldn’t be familiar with what happened requiring her to step in. moreover, the manner of doing so is rather flimsy and feels like a total cheat to get back to the status quo of doing things.
The other problem here, which isn’t much of an issue at all but does deserve mention is the lacking middle section that completely drops the killer for long periods. Shifting focus away from who’s out to kill them to feature her going through how to get the machine working and then committing suicide, clearly aping the montage from the original but missing what made that one work as that kept the killer as the main focus while it’s completely forgotten here. Some might not even have an issue as the same energy and fun carries throughout, but the lack of intent from the killer is a minor sticking point which does emerge as the film’s flaws.
Overview: ****/5
While it feels a tad underwhelming compared to the original by dropping the intent from the killer throughout the film, the same sense of fun emerges which is a big plus to make this a worthwhile sequel. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of the original or looking for a slick, inoffensive mainstream genre effort that’s not too troublesome, while those who didn’t enjoy the first one or not appreciative of the style should heed caution.
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