Scream 2.

Review #2592: Scream 2.

Cast: 

Neve Campbell (Sidney Prescott), Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers), David Arquette (Dewey Riley), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Cici Cooper), Jamie Kennedy (Randy Meeks), Laurie Metcalf (Debbie Salt), Elise Neal (Hallie McDaniel), Jerry O'Connell (Derek Feldman), Timothy Olyphant (Mickey Altieri), Liev Schreiber (Cotton Weary), Lewis Arquette (Louis Hartley), Philip Pavel (Officer Andrews), Christopher Doyle (Officer Richards), Duane Martin (Joel), Rebecca Gayheart (Lois), Portia de Rossi (Murphy), with Roger L. Jackson (voice of Ghostface), David Warner (Gus Gold), Omar Epps (Phil Stevens), and Jada Pinkett (Maureen Evans)

Directed by Wes Craven (#474 - A Nightmare on Elm Street, #558 - Scream, #633 - Red Eye, #939 - Swamp Thing, #1156 - Wes Craven's New Nightmare, #2135 - The Last House on the Left, #2306 - The Hills Have Eyes, #2455 - Vampire in Brooklyn)

Review: 

To be perfectly honest, I never really got into Scream the way I expected to. Sure, I liked the first film (as released in December 1996) just fine, but I honestly forgot that I saw it way back in 2014 and honestly forgot that, yeah, there were pretty clever moments to serve as the attraction for folks that maybe squirm a bit when confronted with horror stuff in a horror movie*. Sure, it was the brainchild of Kevin Williamson being inspired by both his experiences watching horror films like Halloween (1978) and also the idea that maybe movies just make psychos more creative than actually create them. The opening sequence, well, that's the showstopper, and that's the one that got Miramax to buy into it and eventually corral Wes Craven into doing it. You basically got a who-dun-it with enough pieces for folks to enjoy putting together before the inevitable TV-to-the-head. It took a few weeks, but it became a hit that led to clamors for a sequel. Naturally, Williamson actually had a few ideas in mind for potential sequels pretty early (why entice buyers with one movie when you can sell the potential for a franchise?) and production for a second movie was greenlit three months after its release. After a brief fling with having Robert Rodriguez direct, Craven elected to return instead for a film that started filming in the summer for a winter release. By this point in time, Williamson attracted enough attention to become involved in TV with his development of Dawson's Creek, which meant that he shuttled between sets that saw most of the script pages for Scream 2 written when on set. A leak of a script (with one ending stated by Williamson as a "dummy draft" meant to keep details under wraps) on the Internet did not help matters, but the film was released on time to, well, enough success to inspire further sequels, with Scream 3 (which did not have Williamson back) coming out three years later in 2000.

I don't know, man. I did like this movie just fine, mainly when it actually does engage with the actual premise of gore and also with some of its ideas of just who would go around wearing a Ghostface mask after all that happened the first time around, but it really is a case where it almost outsmarts itself with actually getting to the point by the time its two-hour trek is over. The new characters prove to be more of a cipher than really developed, which is a curious move in what is meant to be a "guess who?" movie, and in general it just feels like a movie that needed more time in the oven. The opening sequence (involving a busy movie theater with death in the seats) probably sets too high of an expectation/delight from what actually happens afterwards, and that is saying something for something that pales a bit from what one saw in to open the first film. Campbell does carry the movie pretty well in the vulnerability of someone who I suppose would do better than most in living the hell of life after seeing people you know be murdered get turned into both a book and a film (or worse yet, get played by Tori Spelling) and then see it happen all over again (minus one quibble*). It goes a bit better when seeing the interactions between Cox and Arquette, who probably share the best scenes, mainly in seeing that tension slowly melt away for fondness that is a bit fun to see (it does get a bit distracting hearing that Broken Arrow cue again and again though) in the show of just how much fun-loving bravery can be enough in one guy when pooled against opportunism (or in a different scene with Cox, getting slapped for their trouble). It lifts the film plenty when compared to the new blood with O'Connell-Olyphant-Gellar-Neal, who, well, are just not the kind of folks to really roll with besides a mild flick of my eyes, particularly when I was more interested in the wormy nature of Schreiber (given a bit more to do from the last film, if you recall). 

You might remember Kennedy's character as the one who explained the rules of surviving a horror film in the previous movie, but I'll be honest with you: I don't care (geek or no geek, I think I'll take the bus). If you're going to dispatch anyone who happened to be around from a previous horror movie, if you're going to do kill someone off to raise the stakes, if you're going to do so in broad daylight, he fits the bill, so it is quite a way to go out. It probably isn't too much of a spoiler to say that one of the new blood ends up being a killer, and I have to say that the motive is actually pretty interesting, as if someone wanted to crib lovingly from Natural Born Killers (1994), but then it gets a bit too cute with its other dangling twist, because heaven forbid one killer isn't enough, no, it runs off the oldest tricks of the book in the guise of "cleverness", as if hanging around so long in plain sight (oh hi familiar face from TV) along with, well I'm sure you can get the rest. In general, there are a few fun moments in actual mayhem (and that one fateful moment of triumph) to make for a fairly decent sequel that gives you a few scares within its scrapes of gore and playful attempts at digging into familiar slasher territory that works more often than not.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Tiniest sidenote: When doing these cast listings, sometimes I have to adjust them because for whatever reason, billing is sometimes done *alphabetically* (as noted on the poster and on Wikipedia), which is the stupidest way to do credits. You know and I know who is the star, so why bother?

*You ever hear people whine about horror movies being too gruesome or possibly being a bad influence on the youth? I laugh too.

*The only quibble I have with Sidney comes in the sequence when she gets into a car-wreck. So she escapes a wrecked car, goes a couple of feet and decides, no, I need to go back to try and unmask Ghostface just because. Nay, I won't go to see if that cop on the hood has a gun so I can straight up shoot him, I'm just going to get close and- oh golly gee, the girl I'm with is dead! On an unrelated note, I do wonder if Sidney ever considers getting a gun in the sequels because, screw it, what could go wrong?