EJ Moreno on Happy Death Day 2U and the slasher genre…
It might sound a little hyperbolic, but Happy Death Day and its new sequel Happy Death Day 2U are bringing new life into a tired genre like slashers. And this is coming from someone who loves everything from Sleepaway Camp to the classic Halloween. To say the slashers need a fresh coat of paint is something every genre fan cannot deny though.
The once beloved style of horror is too predictable for modern audiences, either becoming paint-by-number excursions or an experimental on-off that only hardcore viewers found. But Happy Death 2U is a whole new beast when it comes to slashers. The film is marketed to the mainstream viewer, features a complex “final girl” and isn’t even solely a horror film. Yes, what makes Blumhouse’s Happy Death Day franchise so unique and the reinvention needed is how the movies feel like equal parts horror and comedy. And there’s no denying the hardcore science fiction elements in the film with time loops and multiverse theories; something the new sequel is diving into head first.
That’s the key to everything though: Happy Death Day 2U feels like a complete film with its hand in different genres, not just focused on fitting one mold. When a slasher wants to focus on the horror, it comes off one-note. One man is trying to stalk a group of teens, and you start being able to timestamp when a kill is about to happen.
It seemed like the only other route slasher films had to go was a very meta take on the genre, think of movies like Scream, Cabin In The Woods, and 2015’s The Final Girls. But with the Happy Death Day franchise, the films would instead deconstruct time loops and Back To The Future than focus on the inner workings on the horror genre. That’s not to say these films don’t love slashers or horror, but there is more to talk about than why Wes Craven is a cinematic god.
The “universe building” that Happy Death Day 2U does is an impressive feat as well. Not just in the film’s hilarious expansion on the time loops and alternative dimension theories, but with that very MCU style post-credit scene. That single scene did more to set up a sequel than most modern horror franchises. It playfully thrusts our characters into a whole new world as a perfect stinger to this film but can easily be the subject of an upcoming movie as well.
That’s how you do these types of scenes, and that’s how you set up a sequel. Let’s use a current film like Alita: Battle Angel for an example of a lousy way to set up for sequels. That film feels like it skips vital plot points to expand on them later or spends so much time teasing something that will happen down the line that it makes the current product feel hollow. Now, look at the sequel tease in Happy Death Day 2U. It comes after the film, so it’s not taking away from the present narrative, but it also works on its own as a hilarious gag as well. This movie doesn’t feel cocky about getting more films but doesn’t want to hold back on what else they can do in this wild world.
For horror fans as well, that’s an enormous contrast to the underwhelming world building that comes in most franchises. Take the original slashers from an example; they barely knew what was happening from Halloween movie to Halloween movie in the ’80s and ’90s. And then you have modern examples like The Conjuring franchise giving an entire spin-off movie to a jump scare from one scene. There’s nothing of substance to explain why we are getting more movies from this one universe, whereas Happy Death Day and the new sequel feel like a complete story with chapters still left to tell.
One of the more disheartening stories about Happy Death 2U is the lack of support it’s getting from audiences, especially the horror fanbase. At the time of writing, the film is barely at $30 million at the worldwide box-office. That’s a far cry from how well the first film did at the cinemas, with the sequel bringing home $9 million on the opening weekend compared to the original’s impressive $26 million. Happy Death Day 2U even ranked a little lower for critics with the Rotten Tomatoes score dropping 4% between the films. Now it isn’t uncommon for mainstream audiences to push away genre films, but Happy Death Day isn’t even connecting with the core audience either. Horror website Bloody Disgusting also did a piece on why this film and another release never reached its intended viewers, and they seem to blame trailers. Which to be fair, the trailers for Happy Death Day 2U didn’t sell how original and fun the final product ended up being. Again, they marketed the film as an average slasher and didn’t give off all the influences that could’ve drawn in more people.
No matter what though, when the new wave of slashers films finally hits theaters, you can thank this Blumhouse horror film for that. Blumhouse is even looking into more slasher franchises after tackling Halloween following the release of Happy Death Day in 2017. With the original movie and the sequel Happy Death Day 2U showing filmmakers and viewers that slashers aren’t the same old hack & slash from years ago, the new generation of this sub-genre has the chance to be better than before.
SEE ALSO: Movie Review – Happy Death Day EJ M2U
What do you think of this franchise and how it’s bringing back the once-dead genre of slashers? Let your feelings known in the comments below or tweet us @FlickeringMyth…
EJ Moreno
