When Happy Death Day leapt onto the big screen in 2017, it became a sleeper hit. Time loop or time travel movies are always tricky, add that tricky element with horror and comedy, and you’ve hit a goldmine. In the movie, college student Tree finds herself reliving her birthday. Ordinarily, it would have been a fun day to relive, but not to Tree, who also died on her birthday. She repeats the day, desperately trying to find out who killed her. It was so well-received that it spawned a sequel, Happy Death Day 2U.
Now, how do you craft a sequel with almost the exact same premise? In this sequel, Tree is back, and this time, she once again relives her day, except it’s not her birthday anymore. It’s the day after. And the stakes are higher. She not only have to save herself, she has to save one of her friends from being murdered. There is a twist at the end, making this sequel an equally enjoyable watch as the first.
If you are a fan of Happy Death Day 2U, here are some movies that you might just love.
If you like time-travel comedies, you’d like…
Back to the Future (1985), of course. Although there are three movies, the first one is still the best. The premise was fresh, and the characters are memorable. Michael J. Fox stars as Marty McFly, whose good friend, Professor Emmett Brown, invented a time-travel machine, and Marty was accidentally sent 30 years into the past, where he met his parents, as teenagers! As with all time movies, messing with anything in that dimension might cause ripples in the timeline that have grave consequences. Marty must right some wrongs to ensure that he actually was born. With iconic phrases like “Great Scott” and an even more iconic score by Alan Silvestri, Back to the Future is a time-travel classic.
If you like movies with creepy masks, you’d like…
The Purge (2013), naturally. The premise of the movie itself is creepy. For one night in a year, you can do whatever you like to whomever you want. And you won’t be put behind bars for it. This is apparently a desperate measure to keep crime rate down. And it seems to work. Everyone is nice to one another, exchanging civil pleasantries and having dinner parties. Except when its purge night, where you put on a mask and head out to kill. It’s ironic that on the night when people show their true colours, they hide behind masks.
Ordinarily, these masks don’t look super creepy, but couple that with the intention to harm people whom you call friends makes it doubly creepy.
If you like movies about multiverse, then you absolutely have to watch…
The colourful Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (2018). The animated movie was like a breath of fresh air, nothing we’ve ever seen before. The movie follows one teenage Miles Morales, who finds himself becoming the Spider-Man of his reality. After some strange occurrences, he meets up with five other Spider-People from different realities, all brought to his universe. The group must find out what is the threat that may destroy all their realities before it’s too late. The 2019 winner of Best Animated Movie at the Oscars is a kaleidoscope of colours, bold animated visuals and imaginative storytelling that you can’t miss.
If you like movies that’s about You versus, well, you, you’d like…
2012’s Looper. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a young Bruce Willis as Joe in this action crime drama that co-stars Emily Blunt. Gordon-Levitt plays a “looper”, a time traveller that works for a boss that requires him to zip to different time periods to lop off his enemies. Except that eventually, his boss wants him to close the loop, which sets him on a mission to save his younger self from being a target. The best scenes in the movie are when the old and young Joe meet. Initially, young Joe was in denial, but eventually, the pair work together to get rid of the one person that causes chaos in the future.
If you like Happy Death Day 2U’s director Christopher Landon, you’d like…
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015). By now, you would have realised a director who can pull off a mystery, horror, comedy, time-looping movie would be someone not quite your average director. And Landon isn’t. He served as writer and producer for Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014), which is pretty telling that horror is quite up his alley. Before he came up with Happy Death Day, Landon directed Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, which tells the story of how three scouts, on their very last day of camp-out, became accidental heroes as they save their town from a zombie outbreak. The enjoyable teen movie is a great first into Happy Death Day’s direction.
