Review of Scream 2 (1997) by Faris S — 23 Mar 2015

Scream 2, the semi quasi sister to the influential and slightly dated original doesnt so much as build upon or craft some more wonderful satire, instead it turns into a self parody of absolute preposterous nature and becomes bland, laughable and cringe worthy for most of its running time.

Set a couple of years after the previous film Sidney is now at college, she has herself a wonderful boyfriend, her pal Randy is alive and still talking nonsense and everything is gravy. Only Gale Weathers book, which she wrote on the originals plot, has bounced stratospherically into the lime light and cause a feature length film, this sparks a copy cat killer/s wet dream and we soon find the old gang back, running from their life from the iconic ghoul/lunatic.

Its predictable nonsense but the plot isnt exactly criminal, what is however is Wes Craven's complete lack of competance in his film making ability. This sequel comes pretty soon after the original and here Wes just doesnt even seem to be able to hold everything together.

I dont blame him entirely, the writing is fuckin abysmal. We have yet more movie refrencing and stereotypical horror film bashing but although it worked for the original, here it just becomes lazy and yawn inducing.

The dialogue is atrocious and even worse is how poorly a lot of these characters are written, Sid's boyfriend is a complete 1 dimensional character, the killers are god awful, the writer has no idea how to roll everything up so it turns into some twisted, stupid plot that would never stick in court.

The one semi decent character here is Cotton, played by Liev Schrieber, the best actor in the film, he is layered to a degree where his motives are clear but manages to cast just enough doubt as to his involvement with the murders.

However most of that is down to Liev's performance. The cast yet again is a 90's wet dream, Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Liev Schrieber, Timophy Olyphant, Heather Stewart, Luke Wilson, Jada Pinkett, Omar Epps, David Arquette and Jamie Kennedy are all flung into a blender here in hope that they manage to give the film something, what they offer up is a mixed bag.

Liev and Neve steal the show for the most part, with Courtney Cox possibly bringing the most professional performance out of the lot of them, but for everyone else its either 10 minutes or just renditions of former characters.

Even the scares arent as impactful as now Wes is just throwing jump scares in every 2 minutes and killing just about everyone he can, apart from David Arquette, who is pray comes back in the third installment decked out in a futuristic wheel chair.

The film has moments of sheer brilliance however and these moments piss you off, why? Because you wish the whole movie would be like that. Take for example the scene where Randy, Gale and Douie are all trying to find the killer on the campus as Randy is on the phone to him, here we actually get tension, its daylight, there are tonnes of people on their phones, we get nice sparks of genius as the characters frantically run about trying to find the killer only to fail, miserably.

Its great! Or the cat and mouse sequence with Gale, Douie and the Ghoul in the editing suites, the camera work and choreography are brilliant examples of how to make a tense slasher sequence. There is also a decent scene where Cotton tries to convince Sid to go on prime time tv, which is wonderfully creepy and equally tense.

Then the film just has so much needless shit, the opening is piss poor, a dinner hall sing song, a conversation about sequels in the classroom, which is clearly the writers attempt at trying to say this film is going to be far superior, well it isnt, it isnt even close.

Wes does try and hold onto this drivel for as long as possible, with even the 2nd act packing some gut punches but by the 3rd act, all logic and reason is thrown to the wind like an empty bag of crisps.

Everyone gets attacked, nothing makes sense, characters are all convieniantly where they need to be or not and its all just rather stupid. Scream 2 turns into the reasoning behind Scream, it becomes one of those movies the original ripped apart, it is another teen slasher with little substance and terrible writing.

It could have improved a lot on the original, the idea of a copy cat killer isnt a terrible one, the angle the film has with Gale Weathers and Cotton for that matter are pretty interesting, I would have rather had more of that, than the conformity this film forces itself into.

ho hum at best.