Scream 2 (1997)
The first time we're reintroduced to Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), the quintessential horror movie know-it-all who survived the Woodsboro, California killing spree orchestrated by Billy Loomis and Stu Macher in Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's Scream, he's sitting in the Film Theory class of Windsor College, leading a discussion about whether the violence depicted in entertainment bears any responsibility for the real-life violence committed against two senior students butchered in a movie theater. One student, played by Josh Jackson, insists that because the killer was wearing a ghost mask that resembled that of the villains from the film presented in the theater, "it's directly responsible." Cici Cooper (Sarah Michelle Gellar) asserts otherwise: "Movies are not responsible for our actions." When their teacher poses the question of whether someone is setting out to make a real-life sequel to the Woodsboro massacre, Randy replies, "Stab 2? Who would want to do that? Sequels suck!" An ironic takedown of sequels in one that most certainly does not.
While Scream 2 could never hope to come within an inch of its predecessor's blood-freezing suspense or scintillating dialogue, it nonetheless represents one of the more successful sequels in the horror genre: fast-paced, energetic, exciting, and above all, purely entertaining, elevated by another passionate performance from Neve Campbell, whose Sidney Prescott has lost none of the intelligence or ferocity that made her one of the most rootable heroines.
In 1996, Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven revitalized the previously moribund slasher subgenre with a cinematic love letter that simultaneously skewered the conventions of its subgenre while affectionately paying homage to their effectiveness, all while delivering a genuinely horrifying and cathartic horror film that stood on its own. Scream managed to tell a self-contained story that resolved every plot thread without leaving the door particularly wide open for sequels. By the end of the insanely imaginative climax, both antagonists had been brought to justice and the protagonists were free to resume their lives as best as they could. But as long as money talks, Ghostface will stalk, and over $50 million within the first month of Scream's release is a scary lot of money on which to rest one's laurels. And so, one year later, production commenced on a sequel. In theory, that minimal interval between releases portends a hastily sketched product motivated more by financial gain than genuine artistic inspiration. In effect, with Williamson and Craven resuming their roles as screenwriter and director respectively, Scream 2 is a bloody blast from start to finish.
Two years after the Woodsboro killing spree, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has moved away from her Californian hometown to begin the next chapter of her life at Windsor College in Ohio. To help navigate this exciting but intimidating new phase, she has formed a new friend group that consists of her roommate slash best friend, Hallie McDaniel (Elise Neal), her premed boyfriend, Derek Feldman (Jerry O'Connell), and Derek's best friend and Hallie's boy toy, Mickey Altieri (Timothy Olyphant). Fellow Woodsboro survivor and hero Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) is riding the wave of her bestselling true-crime novel, The Woodsboro Murders, a slightly fictionalized account of Loomis and Macher's hometown massacre that's just been adapted into a sensational teen slasher film titled Stab. On the night of the movie's overpopulated premiere, two Windsor seniors, Phil Stevens (Omar Epps) and Maureen Evans (Jada Pinkett), are murdered by a stranger disguised in the Ghostface costume, kicking off a series of copycat murders with the intent of finishing what was started in Woodsboro. Rejoining with his fellow survivors is Deputy Dewey Riley (David Arquette), who, with the aid of Gale, is determined to unmask the identity (or identities) of this new serial killer before they can claim the life of Sidney, who once again appears to be the prime target.
Straight from the opening scene, Scream 2 sets the stage for a sequel that's at once wickedly imaginative yet decidedly less scary than its forebear. The introduction of the original Scream remains perhaps the most iconic in the history of horror, utilizing a familiar but isolated suburban setting, a progressively threatening telephone conversation, a twisted game of horror movie trivia, and a three-dimensional performance from the criminally underrated Drew Barrymore to produce a set piece so suspenseful, petrifying, and gut-wrenching that it could stand on its own as a short film, divorced from the remainder of the movie that follows it. Realizing that they could never hope to replicate the genre-defining success of this cold open, Williamson and Craven adopt a different approach. What they come up with is more clever than outright terrifying, doubling down on the layer of self-referentiality that distinguished Williamson's original script through an in-universe adaptation of Scream 1. A horde of horror-obsessed teens and college students attend the premiere of Stab, thirsting for the bloodshed with no concern for the fact that it actually transpired in their world two years prior. The center of focus is black couple Phil and Maureen, the latter of whom despises horror movies and would rather be attending a Sandra Bullock movie, and the former attending only because their tickets are free.
In a flourish more creative in conception than execution, Williamson and Craven recreate the opening of Scream with a sensationalized, B-grade reenactment starring Heather Graham in a hideously incongruous wig that loosely resembles that of Barrymore's. In terms of acting talent, Graham is no match for her "real-life" counterpart, who poured her heart and soul into the greatest performance delivered by any actor in any horror film whose screen time amounted to less than 15 minutes. By contrast, Graham is a block of wood, on hand to titillate the perverted male audience and collect her paycheck. The stunning suburban Californian home occupied by the "real" Casey Becker has been remodeled into a mansion full of uncovered glass windows. Instead of just making popcorn in preparation for her boyfriend to arrive so they can snuggle up with a horror film, Graham's Casey is naturally preparing to take a shower while a thunderstorm rages outside. (Apparently the quietness and stillness of nighttime wasn't enough.) In the one instance of restraint exhibited by this generic woman-alone-in-a-house slasher, when Graham disrobes, Craven frames her from the top of her back before cutting to a ground-level shot of her robe falling on the floor, denying the male spectators of the flesh for which they're salivating.
After Graham exits the bathroom to answer the dreaded phone call, Ghostface pops up in front of a window to elicit cheap cheers from the overly pleased audience. The dialogue between Graham and Roger Jackson (reprising his role as the voice of Ghostface) is brainless. Rather than beginning as a slightly odd but seemingly harmless conversation between two strangers who share a passion for horror films before escalating into a nightmarish fight for the survival for both Casey and her boyfriend, Stab's exploitative treatment gets right to the threat, with the killer asking if she can see her boyfriend outback and if she'd like a boyfriend. "You know, I don't even know you, and I dislike you already!" says Graham. It's difficult to tell whether Williamson set out to rewrite his original opening in earnest or parody it. Either way, the lamebrain audience is foaming at the mouth in elation, standing up in their Ghostface costumes, brandishing their plastic hunting knives, cheering for Graham's impending murder. The atmosphere of the theater is convivial in a way that foretells that of the remainder of the sequel while reinforcing the communal excitement of watching a horror movie.
When Phil leaves Maureen to use the bathroom, the real action begins, and this is precisely where the filmmakers reveal their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. As Phil prepares to urinate in a bathroom stall, he overhears someone in the adjacent stall mumbling to himself. Amused and curious, Phil struggles to contain a laugh and presses his head against the stall for a better listen. Surely enough, the mumbler is none other than the real Ghostface, who plunges their hunting knife through the wall and into Phil's ear, leaving him to grip it in agony before collapsing on the floor to bleed out. This kill is fundamentally absurd on two levels: (1) how did Ghostface intuitively predict that Phil would hear his mumbling and press his head against the wall, and (2) how did Ghostface's knife manage to penetrate the wall? Nonsensical as it logically is on the surface, the kill is undeniably brutal, and Craven milks the moment for every last drop of visceral agony.
More prolonged and logically credible is Maureen's subsequent murder. Donning Phil's leather jacket, Ghostface enters the theater and sits beside Maureen, who believes the man beside her is her boyfriend. As she snuggles up to him in fear of the reenacted murder transpiring on the big screen, Maureen realizes her hands have become soaked in blood. Before she can comprehend the reality of her situation, that the blood isn't fake, Ghostface whips out his hunting knife and plunges it into Maureen's stomach. Painfully, she stands up and stumbles for help, but the theater-goers either can't feel her grabbing them, can't hear her, or assume she's an actress hired for a publicity stunt, granting the killer carte blanche to stab her two more times in the back. Maureen's murder is painful to watch, with Craven immersing us in her agony and helplessness, yet laced with a horrifying irony. Whereas Casey was harassed, chased, and butchered in and around the supposed comfort of her own home, alone in the middle of nowhere, her parents just out of their eyesight, Maureen is stabbed to death in full view of an ecstatic audience, a male member of whom triumphantly shouts "Kill her!" as if he's watching Scream 2 with us. If someone had recognized Maureen's cries for help and intervened, she potentially could have survived. It's only when she climbs on the platform before the screen and lets out a scream that the audience pauses their cheering, removes their masks, and begins to comprehend the reality of what they're witnessing: a real-life murder. As a depiction of life imitating art imitating life, a concept verbalized in Film Theory by Mickey, Craven and Williamson stage Maureen's murder in conjunction with that of the fictitious Casey Becker. Little does the audience know that as they're watching a dramatized murder on the screen, an actual one is unfolding in real time right before their eyes.
The supporting characters of Scream are a tough bunch to beat, what with the sexy, sarcastic, and fiercely loyal Tatum, the soft-spoken and mysterious Billy, and the wisecracking and boisterous Stu, but their replacements in Scream 2 consist of a fun, realistic, and seemingly protective new friend group. Having transformed from the chubby and endearingly naive Vern Tessio in Stand by Me at 11 years old into a Hollywood-handsome heartthrob with wavy, chestnut-colored hair and lean physique, Jerry O'Connell fills the role of Sidney's new boyfriend with sincerity, open-heartedness, unabashed romanticism, a touch of endearing nerdiness, and poignancy. He plays Derek Feldman as the polar opposite of Billy Loomis. While Billy had a psychotic intensity in his eyes and struggled to suppress his frustration with Sidney's reluctance to put out, Derek exhibits zero psychopathic tendencies and is in no rush to push their relationship forward. In a case of telling over showing, Randy and Mickey mention that Derek is a premed student, though he's never shown studying medicine in class.
Unlike her previous boyfriend, Derek is invariably protective over Sidney. The first time we meet him, he runs over to Sidney after hearing about the double homicide of Phil and Maureen, checking to see how she feels about it. When Sidney is attacked by Ghostface in a sorority house, Derek rushes to her aid, unafraid to put himself in harm's way, evinced when he takes a slash to his arm while searching for her assailant, or humiliate himself in front of his entire school by singing "I Think I Love You" by David Cassidy with a mediocre but spirited voice to demonstrate his unyielding devotion to her. However, as Sidney's sense of safety and trust begins to dismantle, Derek is remarkably understanding of her need for distance, vowing to wait for her for when she's ready to resume their relationship.
In place of Gale's previous, slain cameraman, Kenny, is the much younger, leaner, and black Joel (Duane Martin), a primary source of comic relief in Williamson's script. Rather than placing black characters in his script for the sake of tokenism, Williamson utilizes them to express racially specific commentary on the treatment of black characters in horror in general. Maureen accuses the genre of "historically excluding the African American element" and performs the stereotype of talking back at the theater screen to criticize a white woman for making stupid decisions that increase her chances of being killed. Likewise, Joel is self-aware about the misfortune suffered by black characters in horror films. When he finds himself and Gale in a horror film-like situation, he comments that "Brothers don't last long in situations like this," recognizing the insanity of sticking around campus and prioritizing their jobs over their own lives. Randy remains savvy about the rules of horror and its sequels, ruling nobody out as a suspect and still harboring an unrequited attraction for the invariably unavailable Sidney.
Three characters, however, restrict the reality of Williamson's universe and should have been either rewritten or excised altogether. The worst offenders are sorority sisters Lois and Murphy (Rebecca Gayheart and Portia de Rossi respectively), whose artificial politeness and passive-aggressive insults immediately declare them as caricatures fit for another movie, perhaps a satirical college comedy. They're slender, attractive, and unsettlingly moronic. If they were revealed as the killers, it would make sense, their phony personalities a mask for evil. On the flip side, that would have been overly predictable. Therefore, while Williamson smartly refrains from putting them behind the mask, that also renders their involvement in the story superfluous and tonally disruptive. At least in terms of personality, shallow and slutty as they may be, they're consistent. The same can't be said for Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), whose characterization is completely muddled.
In order to present him as the obligatory red herring, Williamson and Schreiber render Cotton ridiculously insane. To be fair, he harbors righteous resentment toward Sidney for falsely accusing him of murdering her mother and consequently sending him to prison for a year, during which time he faced the possibility of the death penalty. Even so, Cotton is unreasonably unhinged. Take the scene in the library where Cotton sneaks up on Sid and tries to coerce her into accompanying him on a televised interview with Diane Sawyer so he may further clear his name. Craven directs the most sloppily calibrated performance from Schreiber here, who plays Cotton as a petulant narcissist on the verge of committing the type of crime for which he was wrongly accused three years prior. He constantly puts his hands on Sidney, curses at her, and erupts in anger over her rejection of his offer, all while insisting that he's not the psycho killer many people still think he is. Once he's detained and questioned by Chief Hartley (Lewis Arquette, father of David) and Sidney's bodyguards, Cotton reacts with impudence, mocking them for detaining an innocent man and defying them to book him. While preparing to leave, he insinuates guilt to Gale. "You were so instrumental in my freedom. You're not having character doubts now, are you?"
When Sidney is held at knifepoint by the main killer, revealed to be Nancy Loomis (Laurie Metcalf), the mother of Billy, Cotton aims a gun at both of them, threatening to shoot Sidney when Nancy insists he could earn the stardom of the sole survivor if Sidney is killed. Only when Sidney yields to his demand to do the Diane Sawyer interview does Cotton relent and shoot Nancy instead. Was he actually considering killing her unless she granted him his wish, or was that a bluff to disarm Nancy? Neither Schreiber nor Williamson makes that clear, with Cotton unconvincingly insisting that he would never do anything to hurt Sidney. In the final scene, Sidney shifts the media spotlight onto Cotton, insisting that he's the true hero of the story. As Cotton and Sidney share a glance of mutual respect and appreciation, with Cotton finally getting what he's been craving, a horde of reporters swarming around him and bombarding him with questions, the filmmakers seem to adopt Sidney's position, hailing Cotton as a hero. But wait, this is the same guy who had considered shooting Sidney one scene before if she hadn't given him what he wanted, who ambushed her in the library and berated her for daring to say no to him. In what universe would this borderline sociopath qualify as a hero?
While the core of Sidney Prescott's soul remains unchanged, Neve Campbell reflects her two-year evolution in both her wardrobe and altered hairstyle, donning an olive-green tank top beneath a brown leather jacket, complemented by a black bob cut that emphasizes her expressive face, hardened by a life-altering trauma. Reprising the role that made her a modern scream queen and one of the most empowering subversions of the stereotypical damsel in distress, Campbell retains Sidney's intelligence, quick-wittedness, proactivity, and ferocity with an impassioned performance. She's brilliant at holding a close-up, conveying a cocktail of sadness, guilt, sympathy, and mistrust in her eyes as they brim with tears. Exemplified by a pregnant pause when questioned about her trust, Campbell projects Sidney's internal conflict of fearing for Derek's wellbeing while wrestling with paranoia over the potential of his complicity, fueled by her PTSD over having nearly been murdered by her last boyfriend. Even when Sidney's nerves are stretched to the breaking point at the death of a hometown friend, Campbell contains her grief beneath a resilient, hard-shell exterior, steadfastly refusing to break like glass, no matter how desperately she must fight to avoid doing so.
Returning as the tough-as-nails reporter whose ego has been inflated by the success of her latest book, Courteney Cox doubles down on Gale Weathers' cutthroat ruthlessness in pursuit of fame, reflected in a physical transformation that captures Gale at her nastiest and Cox at her most stunning, bearing a black bob cut with streaks of dark red. Williamson gifts Gale with the most character development of anyone in this sequel. In the beginning, she reverts to the "money-hungry, fame-seeking" opportunist initially presented in Scream, orchestrating an impromptu interview between Cotton and Sidney without the latter's knowledge to put her on the spot and humiliate her for falsely accusing her client, earning herself a second punch to the face. She's authoritarian in her demands of Joel, becoming belligerent when he expresses hesitation in putting his life in danger for a story, and cruelly dismissive of a fellow reporter who claims to idolize her, slamming her flattering remarks as "both desperate and obvious."
However, whenever Gale finds herself in the presence of Dewey, she softens up, unable to suppress a smile even when he's cutting her down to size and calling out her cruelty. In the first film, the question of whether Gale's attraction to Dewey was genuine or a ploy to extract information was left unanswered. In Scream 2, Cox uses her disarming smile and off-the-record tenderness to reveal the answer. She's also gifted at playing up the ambiguity of her character. When Gale pleads with Joel to stay by her side, insisting "I need you. I cannot do this without you," it's difficult to discern whether she means that wholeheartedly or it's merely a manipulation tactic. Either way, she's entirely convincing, just as much so when she tells Dewey "I feel really bad. I never say that 'cause I never feel bad about anything. But I feel bad now." As the body count rises, Gale's main focus becomes less about writing her next book on the Windsor College murders and more about unmasking "this fucker." She truly develops sympathy for the victims and a genuine desire to solve the case alongside Dewey.
Completing the quartet of returning Woodsboro survivors, Dewey assumes the role of a surrogate big brother to Sidney, flying to Ohio to check in on her following the recent double homicide and keep an eye on her. For the majority of his screen time, however, Dewey is nearly attached to the hip of Gale, toward whom he nurses a great deal of resentment for her insulting and condescending portrayal of him in her novel. David Arquette portrays Dewey in a manner less nerdy and flirtatious than previously, showing assertiveness and indignation to Gale in a childishly sulky attitude that nevertheless fails to camouflage his irresistible attraction to her. Arquette is so over the top in his anger that he doesn't even appear to take himself seriously, ranting at Gale in the affectionate manner of an immature little brother. Upon seeing the unforced change within her soul, however, Dewey relents and gives in to the tenderness that he's been desperately withholding since first meeting her.
While Scream 2 doesn't reach the threshold of a wholeheartedly "romantic" horror film, the playful interplay and banter between Dewey and Gale counterbalances the prevailing atmosphere of murder and silliness with an undercurrent of lightheartedness, accentuated by a melancholy guitar score that aurally highlights their steadily mounting attraction and wholesome chemistry. Likewise, Craven beautifully incorporates the music of "She Said" by Collective Soul at the end of Williamson's most unabashedly romantic moment that solidifies Sidney and Derek's all-in relationship, playing the full song over the end credits.
At 120 minutes, the runtime for Scream 2 is a little too long for a teen slasher, but Craven moves the proceedings at a lively clip thanks to lighthearted interactions, an adventurous, propulsive tone, and a satisfying amount of breakneck chase and murder sequences that prevent the risk of dragging. From the ebullient reactions of the theater-goers in the opening set piece, cheering for onscreen murder, chasing each other around with plastic knives, to Derek jumping up on a cafeteria table and singing "I Think I Love You" to Sidney before the entire cafeteria erupts into claps and cheers over their kiss, and Dewey and Gale breaking into the college after hours to find a VCR, Scream 2 sustains an upbeat atmosphere that never wavers.
Cinematographer Peter Deming conjures a handful of striking camera angles that invest the murder set pieces with a degree of suspense-building. While Cici is alone in her sorority house, watching TV and talking to a friend on the phone, Deming slides the camera from behind a wall as if to spy on her like a ghost. After she hears a noise upstairs, she calls up to ask if someone's there, and Deming places the camera above the staircase, looking down at Cici to create a voyeuristic atmosphere. When she goes to answer the phone, Deming positions her in front of a closet door to build anticipation for the sudden, jarring emergence of Ghostface. As the trio of heroes, Sidney, Gale, and Cotton, stands over the corpse of Nancy Loomis on the theater stage, Deming frames them in a low-angle shot to signify their gaining of the upper hand.
The most suspenseful and tense set piece is neither a murder nor a chase, but the aftermath of a fatal car accident. After Ghostface crashes a cop car into a construction site, causing a metal pole to impale Officer Richards through the back of his head and out of his eye. The killer is unconscious, and Sidney and Hallie are left trapped in the backseat, unsure how to escape. The backdoors are locked and the passenger door is jammed against a wall. Realizing that the pole crashed through the prisoner partition, Sidney pulls it down, with help from Hallie, and climbs through it to the passenger seat. Determined to learn the identity of her assailant, Sidney reaches slowly for his mask as Lussier cuts between close-ups of Sidney and Hallie's terrified faces and the killer's ghostly, immobile mask to build an unbearable level of apprehension. With her other arm, Sidney accidentally presses the horn. Craven immerses us in Sidney and Hallie's paranoia, making us jump and hold our breaths alongside them, terrified the killer is going to wake up, but he doesn't. Not wanting to take the risk of moving his mask, Sidney climbs over Ghostface and out the broken window, and against her wishes, Hallie follows suit.
The outcome of this scene is brilliantly unpredictable. As Sidney returns to the car to unmask the killer, he has already miraculously disappeared, only to jump out seconds later from behind a corner and ambush Hallie, stabbing her four times in the chest. Aside from the first, Craven emphasizes Sidney's horrified reaction over the stabs themselves, using a squeaky sound effect and a postmortem glimpse of Hallie's bloodied corpse to let our imagination fill in the blanks.
Dane Farwell returns to don the costume of Ghostface and perform his customary pratfalls before the identities of the killers are revealed in the final act. One of Ghostface's most endearing attributes is his sporadic clumsiness during high-intensity sequences, and Scream 2 provides Farwell with no shortage of opportunities to remind audiences how hilariously human the people are beneath the mask. Within a single sequence, Ghostface makes two lunges at Sidney; one ends with Sidney pushing him into a bureau, and the other with him falling over a chair. One scene prior, as he chases Cici upstairs, he crashes into a table. This chuckle-eliciting clumsiness kills two birds with one stone: reinforcing the human vulnerability of the psychopaths adopting Ghostface's persona, and feeding into the darkly comedic undertone that characterizes the Scream franchise. The only instance in which Williamson and Craven push their killer out of the realm of human klutziness and into that of sheer stupidity is when, in an effort to kill Gale, Ghostface resorts to hurling a stool and ramming his shoulder against a soundproof window.
Aside from the opening of Stab within the opening of Scream 2, Williamson and Craven permit a sneak peek at one more scene from their in-universe slasher, and it's a reenactment of Sidney and Billy's argument in Woodsboro High's hallway from Scream 1. Under Craven's self-parodying direction, this sequence plays out like a poorly written and acted soap opera. The casting of Tori Spelling as Sidney Prescott is slyly clever because, in the original Scream, when asked by Tatum who would play her if a movie based on her life were ever made, Sidney grimly replied, "with my luck, they'd cast Tori Spelling." Her takedown of Spelling appears to have been justified because Spelling's dramatic acting is mediocre at best and embarrassingly melodramatic at worst, lacking the dewy-eyed passion, emotional authenticity, and barely contained fury that Campbell brought to this very scene. Playing opposite Spelling is Luke Wilson, who's about seven years beyond the age of a high school student and looks every bit as much. With black bangs hanging over his forehead to bestow him with a more youthful and troubled appearance, Wilson delivers his perfunctory lines in a hushed, affectedly mysterious tone that fails to recapture the intensity or melancholia of Skeet Ulrich.
A year after writing Scream, Kevin Williamson's penchant for self-referential and witty dialogue appears to have dulled quite a bit, as the interactions in Scream 2 lack the sharpness of his original screenplay. In no scene is this drop in verbal acuity more blindingly apparent than in the aforementioned Film Theory classroom discussion. Williamson uses this scene to take a pointed stab at the presumed inferiority of movie sequels, with Randy and Cici standing in for the uneducated, elitist film snobs who make blanket statements like "By definition alone, they're inferior films," while Mickey represents the more open-minded enthusiast who calls bullshit on their dismissive generalizations and champions the universally beloved sequels such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Godfather Part 2, the latter of which earns the unanimous agreement of his class as the "Oscar-winning exception."
Despite the spiritedness of the actors partaking in this conversation (Kennedy, Gellar, Olyphant, and Jackson), the dialogue with which they're saddled is perfunctory and idiotic. Randy, the clear class clown, parodies Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice as the Terminator and Marlon Brando's as Vito Corleone, and the entire class erupts into simultaneous, artificial laughter, despite the fact that nothing funny has been spoken. Williamson even messes up a classic line from one of the highest acclaimed horror sequels, James Cameron's Aliens. When Josh Jackson quotes, "Get away from her, you bitch!" Randy chimes in to pompously "correct" him. "I believe the line is 'Stay away from her, you bitch.'" He believes wrong, and no one calls him out on it. Williamson clumsily poses a question of whether cinematic violence effects real-world violence, but it's impossible to take this discussion seriously when idiots like Jackson's "Film Class Guy #1" assert "Hello? The guy was wearing a ghost mask, just like in the movie, it's directly responsible." Fortunately, Cici is present to speak on behalf of the logical and mentally sound. "No, it's not. Movies are not responsible for our actions."
While Roger Jackson's voice remains as ominous and guttural as in the original, it isn't put to the same level of use. For his phone conversations with Casey and Sidney in Scream, he began in a casual and conversational tone to lull them into a false sense of security and familiarity before suddenly paralyzing them with vile death threats. By contrast, in Scream 2, Jackson's lines are instantly threatening. The second someone picks up the phone, Ghostface will announce his murderous intention with a line like "Have you ever felt a knife cut through human flesh and scrape the bone beneath?" Speaking of which, the tongue-in-cheek conversation between Randy and Ghostface is cleverly written, with the two verbally jousting and speaking in movie terms. "Oh yeah?" retorts Randy. "Well, let's redirect the moment, Mr. I'm So Original." Editor Lussier intercuts their repartee with Dewey and Gale running around campus in search of the killer, ambushing anyone talking on their phone. This high-energy editing and acting adds an element of adventure that's exciting, if intentionally not scary.
As the mastermind behind the Windsor College copycat murders, Laurie Metcalf portrays two wildly contrasting sides of the same character: the excessively flattering, relentlessly aggressive reporter desperate to ingratiate herself with her alleged idol and extract juicy details for a story, and the grief-stricken, vengeful mother so consumed with taking revenge on the woman who killed her son that she fails to recognize her own culpability in his turn to crime. Under the false persona of "Debbie Salt," Metcalf elicits sympathy for the stiff upper lip she maintains in response to Gale's numerous put-downs and rebuffs. When the time comes to expose her true identity, Metcalf lets her freak flag fly with a deliciously unhinged and uninhibited performance that lays waste to her previous veneer of composure and undeterred professionalism. Her bulging eyes and clownish, dimple-cheeked grin actually align more with the facial expressions and mannerisms of Stu than Billy.
In a similar vein to Betsy Palmer's performance as Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th, Metcalf alternates between over-the-top buffoonery and enraged, stern-faced seriousness and self-righteous resentment. However, through no fault of her performance, she fails to elicit the empathy of her far more tragic predecessor. While both villains are mothers driven to madness by the deaths of their sons, the circumstances surrounding those deaths couldn't be more divergent. Pamela's son was an innocent, physically deformed 11-year-old who was thrown into a lake by his sadistic campmates and left to drown by his negligent counselors. Nancy's son was a serial killer whose girlfriend gave him a taste of his own medicine in both justifiable retribution and self-defense.
Similar to how the opening of Scream 2 relocates the action from a house to a movie theater, so too does the climactic showdown between Sidney and her unmasked assailants relocate to the theater department of Windsor College, a perfectly apt setting for a more tonally theatrical climax. Using the boyfriend reveal of his previous screenplay to his advantage, Williamson incorporates psychological tension by having Mickey deceive Sidney into believing Derek is his accomplice, despite Derek's insistence to the contrary and pleas to be untied from a cross. As a result, Derek's death packs the greatest gut punch of all, as not only was he an innocent victim whose love for Sidney was genuine, but now Sidney is left to grapple with the guilt of having let her mistrust make him an open target.
Williamson is a little too in love with his protagonists in Scream 2 to the point where he undermines their humanity with plot armor, inflicting potentially life-threatening injuries on them from which they miraculously recover. In a more brutal repeat of his attack from Scream 1, Dewey is pinned against a bulletproof window and stabbed several times in the back, only to be wheeled once again on a gurney into an ambulance, alive and disoriented. Gale is shot in the side of her stomach, but the bullet is revealed to have bounced off her rib. Likewise, even though both Mickey and Nancy are given ample opportunities to pull the trigger on Sidney, they elect to waste them in favor of thoroughly divulging their motives, giving Sidney plenty of time to gain the upper hand and escape. Billy and Stu committed the same mistake, but in this sequel, it feels more contrived.
Williamson and Craven rely too heavily on action spectacle and noise that make their climax more chaotic and less exhilarating than their first. Only after Sidney escapes does Nancy finally begin shooting, her bullets penetrating a wall but conveniently missing every part of Sidney's body. Light fixtures collapse onto the stage and emit sparks. Plastic rocks fall onto Nancy as she climbs the wall, though there's little suspicion that she's been crushed to death. This climax feels like it belongs more in an action movie than a horror, though it's at least effective at further showcasing Sidney's resourcefulness and badassery.
For a franchise that thrives on mocking the cliches of the horror genre, Scream 2 definitely engages in its share. When Cici attempts to report her harassment to campus security, she's thwarted by poor cell reception. After she hangs up, her roommate appears behind her and startles her, accompanied by a generic scare chord. Williamson's use of doors is as contrived as John Carpenter's in Halloween. As Cici and Gale are being targeted by Ghostface, almost every door they attempt to open is locked. At no point is this more illogical than when Ghostface inexplicably manages to lock Sidney into a sorority house from the inside. Fortunately, Scream is one horror franchise that doesn't ask to be taken entirely seriously, so these kinds of logic gaps and contrivances are infinitely more forgivable, making up what it lacks in heart-stopping terror with undemanding, fast-paced entertainment, gory kills, exuberant performances, and a heartfelt affection for the inherent silliness of horror films.
6.5/10
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