Happy Death Day 2U Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

Downs...

6. It Explains Too Much

The first film left the specifics of Tree's (Rothe) time loop totally unexplained, and that was a smart choice which allowed the film to just focus on exploiting its neat concept.

Unfortunately, the sequel goes in entirely the other direction, revealing the reason for the time loop in the first five minutes and filling much of the film with needlessly verbose sci-fi mumbo-jumbo in an attempt to make it somewhat make sense.

But the script ends up tying itself in knots with its hyper-convoluted "logic", and not even in a way that's messily satisfying.

This clearly wants to be a Back to the Future II-type sequel - even namedropping and referencing the movie several times - but by piling on increasingly convoluted new layers to Tree's problem "just because", it ends up more exhausting and irritating than clever.

The sequel really didn't need to explain the cause of the time loop - and certainly not in this level of depth - and the result is a bold but ultimately unsatisfying shift into full-tilt sci-fi territory.