Happy Death Day 2U, is a mixture of horror, revenge of nerds, romance, mean girls and science fiction. Take your pick. Flower (Jessica Rothe) is again at the center of the die each day exercise, but the film begins with Ryan Phan (Phi Vu) passing through the same action Flower experienced in the first Happy Death Day. His experience is a little more interesting, not only does he repeat, his circle places him in a location to meet himself from another time period.
What we learn early in the story is that nerd, science/math students have been experimenting with a machine that allows folks to move in time. They use a large dome that looks like a Van De Graph generator on steroids. It sends light waves and sparks around it self and changes the day an individual wakes in.
Ruby Modine again plays the room mate she back from her death scene at the end of the first film, because of the changes the “project” creates. Danielle,(Rachel Matthews) is the mean girl, all pretty and sassy toward Flower. In this new world Flower wakes to find her lover Carter (Israel Broussard) is in an affair with the stunning Danielle. Probably not a good situation for Flower, but the good happens when the changed time line has her mother back and alive.
Comedy comes from Steve Zissis who plays Dean Roger Bronson an opponent of the research, and a great fan of the TV program The Cat From Hell which he watches with his cat. The guy has no hope of stopping the research program, but he works at it and ends up with a broken nose and in other embarassing situations.
While the dean watches The Cat From Hell Flower and her mother watch the original Creature From The Black Lagoon when they are together after Flower has experienced mom’s death and return to life.
There are cliff hangers as the humming time machine starts and stops and knocks out all the electrical power in the college, as time runs out to place Flower in a new time line, or have her go back to the one she lived in the first episode.
There is more mystery this time, and the nerds are fun to observe, but we now know there is a solution. That wasn’t as clear in the first film and forced our attention more than this one does. Even with the baby face assassin constantly floating around there is little scare time on the screen.