director
Wes Craven
screenwriter
Kevin Williamson
producers
Cathy Konrad
Marianne Maddalena
cinematographer
Peter Deming
music
Marco Beltrami
editor
Patrick Lussier
cast
Neve Campbell (Sidney Prescott)
Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers)
David Arquette (Dwight 'Dewey' Riley)
Elise Neal (Hallie McDaniel)
Jerry O'Connell (Derek Feldman)
Jamie Kennedy (Randy Meeks)
Laurie Metcalf (Debbie Salt)
Liev Schreiber (Cotton Weary)
Timothy Olyphant (Mickey Altieri)
Sarah Michelle Gellar (Cici Cooper)
Jada Pinkett (Maureen Evans)
Duane Martin (Joel Jones)
Lewis Arquette (Chief Louis Hartley)
Rebecca Gayheart (Lois)
Portia de Rossi (Murphy)
Omar Epps (Phil Stevens)
Heather Graham (Casey Becker in 'Stab')
Roger L. Jackson (GhostFace Phone Voice)
Kevin Williamson (TV Show Host)
Joshua Jackson (Film Class Guy #1)
Tori Spelling (Herself)
Luke Wilson ('Billy' Loomis in 'Stab')
David Warner (Gus Gold)
Selma Blair (Cici's friend on phone)
Wes Craven (Man at hospital)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 120m
u.s.
release: 12/12/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other wes
craven films
reviewed on this website:
- cursed
- the hills have eyes
- last
house on the left
- red
eye
- scream
- scream
3
|
A
sequel to a well-loved movie like Scream
has a lot of good will going for it -- and a lot of high expectations
going against it. How to recapture the freshness and surprise
of the original -- the feeling that you were seeing an entire
subgenre both trashed and rejuvenated? The experience of seeing
an original movie for the first time can't be duplicated in a
sequel, which, by definition, is the same only different.
The Scream franchise, though, has one other thing in its
favor: This stuff wasn't original the first time, either.
Scream, as I noted in my review of it last year, was a
clever and effective satire of the then-moribund slasher subgenre.
I liked it well enough, and subsequent video viewings have endeared
it to me more; it's a postmodern, endlessly quotable cult phenomenon.
With Scream 2, you don't necessarily want a radical departure.
You want familiar elements with a spin -- everything you liked
about Scream, only different. On that level, it triumphs.
Director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson resume
their Scream duties, atoning for their earlier misfires
this year -- Craven executive-produced the inept Wishmaster,
while Williamson wrote the popular but lame I
Know What You Did Last Summer. They're working near the
top of their form here. Scream 2 isn't quite as witty
as I'd hoped -- it should've had more fun with the idea of sequels
-- but it's twistier, gorier, and, at times, more shocking. Anyone
could be the killer (the cast is full of red herrings), and anyone
can die at any time.
Except Neve Campbell. She is, after all, the pole holding up
this franchise. Her Sidney Prescott, now in college and pledging
a sorority, wants to put the horror behind her and move on. Three
reasons why she can't: Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), the ice-blooded
reporter who wrote a book about the Scream killings, which
has been made into the movie Stab, starring, of course,
Tori Spelling; Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), who spent the first
Scream in jail for killing Sidney's mom (he was innocent)
and now demands media absolution; and, yep, the killer in the
Munch mask. He's back. Or she's back. Or they're back.
More than this I cannot disclose.
I can say that I enjoyed seeing Neve and Courteney again, as
well as geeky horror addict Randy (Jamie Kennedy) and doofus
deputy Dewey (David Arquette). The sequel also serves up such
new-to-Scream faces as Jada Pinkett (who shines in the
virtuoso opening sequence, set in a theater showing Stab),
Sarah Michelle Gellar (not very Buffy-like here, but still much
better than she was in Last Summer), Laurie Metcalf as
a reporter stalking Gale (for a change), and Duane Martin, who's
funny as Gale's apprehensive new cameraman ("Brothers don't
last long in situations like this," he accurately
points out).
Had Scream 2 been left in other, lesser hands, it would
surely have sucked, as most sequels do (as the movie itself acknowledges
in its best film-nerd scene). That it escapes suckage is due
to Craven and Williamson, who operate under a productive philosophy:
"There's gonna be a sequel anyway, so we might as well come
back and do it up right." They do. Scream 2 is as
clever and nerve-wracking as the original; on its own self-referential,
crowd-pleasing terms, it's a success. Yet I will end this review
as I ended my review of the first movie: How about a truly original
horror film -- some new blood in the genre? Where is the next
Wes Craven? See, I can do same-only-different, too. |
