Universal Pictures has unveiled the official trailer for Happy Death Day 2U, after it first debuted in theaters before the latest Halloween. In the sequel, Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) leads the returning cast as they relive the worst day of their lives over and over again.
It follows Blumhouse’s successful 2017 Halloween meets Groundhog Day slasher Happy Death Day. The original was released in October 2017 and grossed $26 million on opening weekend, and went on to earn $55.7 million domestically and $122.7 million worldwide.
In the original, Tree is a typically self-centered sorority girl who wakes up on her birthday in the bed of a student named Carter (Israel Broussard). After being brutally murdered by a masked killer, she once again wakes up in Carter’s dorm uninjured and is forced to relive the grizzly events over and over again. Spoiler Alert: Tree eventually figures out the killer's identity, and puts an end to the vicious cycle. Or so she thinks.
“The sequel, the way [director Christopher Landon] described it to me, elevates the movie from being a horror movie – and I wouldn’t even say it’s just a horror movie because it’s a horror, comedy, rom-com drama – into a Back to the Future type of genre film where the sequel joins us right from where we left off, it explains a lot of things in the first one that didn’t get explained, and it elevates everything,” Rothe told Colliderearlier this year. “I was really pleased to know that we weren’t just gonna be pushing all the buttons that people loved the first time, over and over again, ‘cause I think that gets old.”
Happy Death Day 2U hits theaters on February 14, 2019. Watch the trailer above.
