Christopher B. Landon

This picks up less than 24 hours after the end of the first movie. Ryan, Carter's roommate, is killed by someone in a Baby mask shortly after checking on the experimental quantum reactor he's been working on with a couple other students. He then wakes up and reexperiences the same day all over again - when he tells Carter and Tree about this, they, of course, immediately know what's going on. They had assumed that everything was finished after Tree closed her time loop. Now they discover that Ryan is accidentally responsible for the time loops, and he's stuck in one himself. Just as they figure this out, things go even more wrong, and Tree ends up stuck in her original time loop...but in a parallel dimension. As Tree figures out the differences between her current dimension and her original one and tries to close the time loop for good, she realizes that she's faced with a choice: staying in her new dimension or going back to her original dimension. Both choices require personal sacrifices.

This wasn't as good as the first movie, which blended horror and comedy really nicely, but it was still an enjoyable continuation. In fact, it continued the original story so well that I was surprised to learn, upon watching the extras, that a sequel hadn't originally been planned.

This felt so connected to the original movie, both in terms of scenes and emotional beats, that it at times felt more like an extended bonus feature for the first movie than a new movie in its own right. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I really enjoyed the characters, both the returning ones and the new ones. Danielle (Rachel Matthews) got a bigger part and was somehow even more hilariously horrible. Lori (Ruby Mordine) got some real closure. And we got to skip all of the "Tree is a drunken horrible sorority girl" stuff and skip straight to the "Tree is awesome and funny" stuff, which was nice. Someone in the extras said that Jessica Rothe (Tree) has "great access to her comedic anger" and they were so right about that. Her rage in this movie was fabulous.

Just a warning: instead of repeatedly being murdered, in this particular movie, Tree takes care of her resets herself by killing herself, so there's a suicide montage. It was fun in a weird way, especially the skydiving bit, but it may still be an issue for some folks. Plus, every time she died I couldn't help but think back to the revelation in the first movie that Tree was experiencing lasting damage - this movie still included that detail, but it completely glossed over the fact that she should have still had accumulated damage from the first movie.

If you liked the humor and characters in the first movie, this is definitely worth watching, although I preferred the horror-comedy genre blend of the first movie more.

Extras:

Gag reel, deleted scene, a couple short featurettes, and possibly some other stuff I'm forgetting.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (més)

It's Groundhog Day, but with murder! Tree is a self-centered, horrible, drunken disaster of a sorority girl who wakes up on the morning of her birthday in some random guy's dorm room. She does her walk of shame back to her sorority house, trades barbs with her roommate, goes to a sorority meeting, and heads out to a party in the evening. She's then killed by someone in a creepy baby mask (the school mascot is the Baby).

She immediately wakes up in the random guy's dorm again. Was it a bad dream or has her day somehow reset herself? The first option seems more likely, but as the day goes on and Tree keeps seeing eerily familiar moments, she wonders if it wouldn't be a better idea to change her evening up a bit, just to be safe. Except the killer in the Baby mask somehow manages to find her again.

So begins Tree's quest to identify her killer and somehow survive to see the day after her birthday.

Yes, I'm on a horror kick right now - just prepping for October, my favorite month. I wish I could enjoy more genuinely scary horror movies, but I'm having fun catching up on some classics and all the horror comedies that have come out in recent years.

This particular movie leans more heavily on the comedy aspect than the horror. Yes, there's a serial killer, Tree dies repeatedly, and innocent bystanders occasionally get killed as well, but for the most part there's surprisingly little blood and nothing very gross or gory. This could have been a gross showcasing of Tree's many deaths, so I was glad that those moments didn't get as much attention as they could have.

It's actually a fairly heartwarming horror movie, as Tree begins to reevaluate her life, her relationships with others, and the choices she's made over the last few years. I kind of wish that Tree and Carter hadn't ended up together, though - it felt a little too much like a "reward the Nice Guy" moment. Plus, Carter technically didn't know much about Tree except that she was pretty, working on being less stereotypically awful, and had some issues related to her mother's death. I could believe Tree falling for Carter, but not so much the reverse.

I enjoyed the various twists, although I'm not sure the timing of everything worked out. I suppose it's one of those movies where it's best if you don't think about it too hard. Overall, it was fun, especially as Tree became more likable.

Extras:

Alternate ending and deleted scenes, "Worst birthday ever!," "Behind the mask: the suspects," and "The many deaths of Tree."

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (més)