SCREAM 2 

INTRODUCTION: Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson team-up once again for a sequel to their hit Ironic Slasher Flick. Scream won many plaudits for its originality, although it is difficult to see why, as it seems little more than a typical slasher flick with slightly crisper dialogue One must therefore conclude that either, the slasher movie has always been self parodying in nature, or this is a typical slasher flick. Either way however entertaining it was, original it wasn't, and now this trend seems to be repeating itself as Craven turns his hand to this much-awaited sequel having already made the definitive "self-parodying slasher sequel" with Wes Craven's New Nightmare. 

SYNOPSIS: Sidney Prescott (Campbell), 2 years older and studying drama at college, is once again being stalked by the knife-wielding Ghost Face. The usual suspects quickly gather, Gail Weathers (Cox) the hard-nosed reporter, Dewey (Arquette) the bumbling ex-cop, Randy the horror obsessed movie nerd, the jock boyfriend (O'Connel), numerous subsidiary suspects/ knife-fodder played by familiar faces, and even Cotton Weary the guy falsely accused of Sidney's Moms murder in the first movie, everyone except for the once-again mysteriously absent father. Together this motley group slash and bleed their way through a 2 hour gore and wit fest. 

REVIEW: But hey who cares about the plot you're here for the blood, guts, gags and beautiful people, right? This film certainly has all three in surplus all wrapped up in a wonderful piece of 90's zeitgeist. 
Ghost Face, the clumsiest serial slasher in movie history, continues to stumble and tumble his way around the screen, never really managing to achieve the menace promised in Edvard Munch's original costume design sketch The Scream. But then this movie isn't about him, it's about those meddlin' kids. 

The lovely Campbell is as good as ever portraying that rare combination of strength and vulnerability, although she does seem a little under-utilised. The lovelier Cox excels at portraying that rare combination of ruthless ambition and caring; the not quite as lovely Arquette plays that rare combination of bumbling and limping and the not even slightly lovely Kennedy gets to grips with that rare combination of dodgy facial hair and bad haircut. The newcomers do well, but are never given the chance to outshine the regulars (if you can call them that after 2 films). The rest of the cast is filled out with familiar faces such as Laurie Metcalf (Rosanne, JFK), Jerry O'Connel (Sliders, Jerry McGuire) & David Warner (every sci-fi movie/TV series ever made) just so you can't eliminate anyone from the list of suspects. Craven and Williamson even put in appearances. One last thing, I really must compliment everyone on how well they die. 

The film's biggest strength and perhaps its fatal weakness is that literally anyone could be the murderer, and this allows Craven to pile on the paranoia. After a while I was even beginning to suspect my companion at the screening, particularly as the preview we attended was frighteningly similar to the one portrayed in the movie. When the killer is however revealed it doesn't really matter, the ending could have been filmed a dozen different ways with any one of the characters revealed to be the killer, without needing any changes to the previous 90 minutes. 

These kids seem a little on the dysfunctional side. Hardly surprising considering what they've been through I suppose, like the aliens from Joe Dante's Explorers they seem unable to communicate in anything but obscure film references, jeez I'm glad I'm not like that. 

As is repeatedly stated in the film a sequel is by definition inferior, but sometimes it can come close, in my opinion. The Godfather, Part 2, was not one of these movies (vastly inferior to the original), but Wes Craven's New Nightmare was (cleverly twisting the original on its head). Scream 2 is neither of these, probably fitting best with the "Empire Strikes Back" explanation, in that it was part of a planned series and therefore is not technically a sequel (building on the concepts established in the original rather than simply trying to replay them). Don't worry if you've never seen the original, the key scenes from the film are played out in clips from the fictional movie "Stab", starring Tori Spelling (in joke) of the events portrayed in the original movie. 

Scream 3 is undoubtedly already in pre-production, although Campbell seems reluctant to put in another appearance, and Williamson is concentrating on his new teen TV series "Dawsons Creek" currently showing Saturday evenings on Channel 4, a recent episode of which parodied "Scream" or as one character described it "A rip-off of a rip-off". 

Catch it before "Scream 3" comes out. 

Mutts Rating: **** 

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