[pullquote cite=”” type=”left, right”][amazon text=Amazon&template=carousel&chan=That Film Guy&asin=B004UGALGI][/pullquote] After the success of Scream, everyone was expecting a sequel. And, just one year later, Scream 2 was released. It opened to rave reviews and an even bigger box office return than the original. They began work on Scream 2 while the first Scream was still in the cinemas, and had a very rushed schedule. However, they managed to get back the surviving cast members and most of the crew. Wes Craven to directed, Kevin Williamson wrote, and Marco Beltrami once again composed the score.
Two years after the events of the original, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has put Ghost Face and everything that happened behind her. Unfortunately, a new movie, entitled Stab, has just come out, based on the events on the Woodboro Murders. This leads to Sidney receiving a lot of prank calls, but she brushes them aside. She’s now in college, has a new boyfriend, Derek (Jerry O’Connell), and is studying performing arts. However, things turn murderous after two students are killed at a test screening for Stab. Sidney, Dewey (David Arquette), Gale (Courtney Cox), and Randy (Jamie Kennedy) once again begin to be terrorized by Ghost Face, and must use their knowledge of ˜the rules’ of horror films to survive.
What’s good about this film is that it’s not just a re-hash of the first film. Sure, it has elements (the phone voice, the satire etc.), but it doesn’t feel like Williamson just re-wrote the first film again, which is a problem with so many sequels. The satire, moving away from horror films in general, is now targeted at horror sequels, with Randy spewing out some really funny lines, especially in the film class scene. There are some brilliantly intense scenes too, especially the wall-divide scene.
Scream 2 still has its flaws however, and they are a lot more noticeable than in Scream. There are some scenes that just don’t fit right, such as one excruciating singing sequence. The end is also quite disappointing. It feels like they had to strip the main characters of their smarts in order to get them where they needed to be for the killer reveal.
The killer reveal is strangely over-the-top, although a nod to another famous horror franchise, with the villain acting really hammy and obviously trying to replicate the original (which was basically insanity brought to life). There are scenes that seem to just be pointless, like the stage scene. It showed that Sidney was still tortured by her past and, no matter how hard she tried, she was still traumatized. This would be fine, except the film established this many times before, and it just seems like pointless exposition to stretch out the running time.
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