In short: Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

Or as the working title probably went, Low Effort: The Movie. Having spent a whopping whole day recuperating from the ordeal of the first movie, and after the film briefly pretends to have changed protagonists setting things up it isn’t going to touch on again at all with it, Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is again trapped in a time loop on her birthday that only ends when she’s killed by a knife wielding killer in a baby mask. But this time, she’s also sucked into an alternative version of her world, so a couple of things are mildly different for her, including the identity of the killer, which will turn out to make even less sense than that in the first one.

You’d think that adding a bit of alternative world travel to the time loop and die set-up of Happy Death Day would automatically include complications or ideas beyond the most functionally obvious, but returning director Christopher Landon – now responsible (I’m using this specific word with purpose) for the script too – clearly doesn’t want to strain his brain or the assumed pea-sized ones of the audience too much. So the alternative world is really only there because the film would otherwise have had to come up with something more interesting for the killer part of the plot, and to get some cheap sentimental kicks in that would have looked trite to old Steve Spielberg in his most sentimental mood.

The new killer’s identity and shenanigans are treated with a perfunctory shrug, the film never even trying to turn them into an actual threat. You could read that as an attempt to not make the same movie again, but if the film really wanted that, it would probably have at least attempted to replace the mock-giallo parts of the first film with anything interesting at all, instead of going through the same rigmarole again, just with obvious disinterest.

Frankly, I don’t have any idea what the film is supposed to be there for beyond cashing in on the first one and turning the whole affair into a franchise with the inevitable mid-credits sequence. There certainly aren’t any new ideas here, or at least old ones recycled with verve. As a matter of fact, I’d say there isn’t even an actual film here, it just looks and sounds like one.


There’s something positive in this whole mess, though: the laziness of the sequel brings into stark contrast how well-constructed and cleverly realized the first one actually was. Reader, I now believe I was too critical in my assessment of the first one!

Three Films Make A Post: Greed has a price.

Werewolf (1995): Tony Zarindast’s originally titled werewolf movie is the sort of thing only a mother (or perhaps a director) will love. The acting’s awkward, the script makes no damn sense at all (the archaeologist bad guys apparently infect people with werewolfery so they can show them off caged, despite having a perfectly fine werewolf skeleton to present and slavery being rather frowned upon in modern times), and the direction…Well, the direction clearly aims for being stylish, but always, absolutely always hits the wrong spot, ending up in turns awkward, bizarre, or just plain inexplicable. I hope you like long, loving tracking shots through a museum while animal noises play in the background, or just as long, loving shots of that darn werewolf skeleton. Additional attractions are Jorge Rivero’s toupee, Richard Lynch, and werewolf make-up in various states of crappiness.

Happy Death Day (2017): Oh, look, it’s a time loop movie! Never seen one of these before. Vile college student Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) is killed again and again by a mysterious masked killer, only to repeat the same day again and again, until she identifies her killer. The problem: she’s such a horrible person there’s nobody she knows who doesn’t have a motive. Speaking of unlikeable main characters, this one makes Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day look like a totally nice guy; and whereas that particular classic actually puts the effort in to show us its main asshole changing into a better person, Christopher Landon’s film doesn’t bother to put any effort into character development. Tree just suddenly isn’t a horrible human being anymore; the mild attempts to explain her character flaws through trauma simple don’t work.

Otherwise, this is a mildly diverting movie that suffers from being neither terribly thrilling, nor funny, nor clever yet also never gets too painful.

The Snowman (2017): Speaking of painful, I don’t hate Tomas Alfredson’s attempt at a serial killer thriller quite as much as most other people seem to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m confusing it with a good or even a mediocre film. There is, after all, nary a scene that doesn’t feature at least one completely inexplicable directing choice or an actor going completely off the rails, with many a scene additionally enlivened by not having any function whatsoever for plot, characters or theme. The violent as well as the more absurd flourishes of the plot really demand to be filmed either in the way of a giallo or of a modern potboiler; Alfredson instead directs them as if they were parts of a thoughtful Nordic style crime movie, at once inadvertently pointing out the stupidity of much what is going on and wasting its potential to entertain. Things are not improved by portentous pacing and a theoretically brilliant cast whose members seem as lost in the pointlessness of the whole affair as I was.


Well, now that I’ve thought about it, I actually do hate this just as much as everyone else does.