SCREAM 2
Oh yeah, THAT's why I don't remember it

  I saw this movie on opening night in 1997, and forgot almost every frame by the next day.  Was I drunk?  No, it was December, maybe if it was earlier in the year, but no.  So why couldn't I remember any of it?  Oh yeah, that's why - it's not exactly memorable.

Written virtually overnight (now we know why the script was so secret), Scream 2 shows all the hallmarks of a movie that was quickly slapped together to cash in on another film's surprise success.  It's badly written, its plot is totally inane, the direction off-kilter (and not in a good way), the music sounds like some twelve-year-old banging away on his Casio keyboard, and if it weren't for some valiant efforts from a couple of cast members and one semi-intense scene, it might've been a total waste of time.  Oh, it's a waste of time all right, but not quite total.

It's two years after the events of Scream, and some enterprising filmmaker has filmed a movie called Stab, based on the mass murder in Woodsboro chronicled in that film.  Wow, just two years; how long do you think it would take for a major motion picture to be made out of, say, Columbine?  Never mind.  On opening night, a young couple (Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps) goes to attend, and Epps is thanked for his patronage by being killed in the bathroom. (by being stabbed in the head through a toilet stall wall where the killer couldn't have possibly known where his head was, while two other people are in the bathroom)  Then Pinkett is killed in front of the whole crowd, who cheers it on, thinking it's a publicity stunt, because EVERYBODY in the crowd is wearing a Ghostface mask.

Zip on over to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who is trying to get on with her life, studying acting at Windsor College, wherever the hell that is.  (note her first scene - have you ever seen her look better?  I haven't.  Schwing!)  Soon enough, people are getting killed (though not, unfortunately, sorority poobah Rebecca Gayheart), and almost all the survivors of the first film descend on the college to offer themselves up as convenient targets.

Craven's really off his game here, framing things obviously in long shots (all the scares are telegraphed), and clumsily in too-close closeups, like Peter Hyams kept doing to annoying effect in The Relic.  It was about at this time where Craven was about to make a step away from the genre, and the result of one "last" film (before his hardly-noticed "mainstream" effort, that violin movie with Meryl Streep) that he obviously did for easy money looks begrudgingly delivered indeed.  This film packs but one half-suspenseful scene, where one character is stalked very much out in the open and in daylight.  It's capped off by some stupid behavior by said character (getting him killed, natch), but for most of its length, it's effective and, necessitated by the setting, doesn't depend on clichés.

Not that Craven at the top of his form would have had much to work with.  Part of what's wrong with this script can be pointed out in a debate between Randy (Jamie Kennedy) and his classmates as to whether sequels are always inferior or not.  A classmate adds as proof that Aliens was superior to Alien, the line, "Get away from her you bitch!"  Randy pointedly corrects this guy that it's "STAY away," not "GET away".  But the thing is, it's GET away.  Watch the fucking movie, tell me I'm wrong.  (though am I the only person in the world who likes the first Godfather better?) This is a script trying hard to be clever and screwing up royally.  I mean, just look at that horrible scene where Sidney's boyfriend (Jerry O'Connell) serenades her in a crowded dining hall to prove he's NOT a nut!

Make no mistake, even when given stupid material like "STAY away...", Kennedy is likeable and very funny in his role.  He has the best delivery of "Fuck you!" I've ever heard, and his conversation with David Arquette where they both rationalize how they can suspect everyone but themselves is amusing.  Arquette's also good, although he's bogged down by an insistence upon continuing this romance with Courtney Cox's loathsome reporter Gayle Weathers, and the film's insistence that this is something we're supposed to be cheering for.  But man, this script, this plot...

One victim, after making a point to turn on her house alarm (after being urged to do so by the killer!) is thrown through a window for no reason by said killer, setting off the alarm, though why the killer would want to attract such attention is beyond me.  A few minutes later, there's another attack in another house, even though there are cops crawling all over campus. The one time we see Sidney act is at a dress rehearsal where they use FX, pyro, the whole shebang...and the set on stage is made of stone blocks!

Sidney spends half the film being guarded by two cops, who tell her "Wait here!" when she gets a threatening email as they go off to investigate, abandoning her to an awkward scene with one suspected killer.  Later, she is forced to crawl over the possibly-dead killer in order to escape from a car, but she still doesn't take off the mask.  (and then she forces her friend to take the same route out, when Sidney could have just picked up any piece of debris lying around and smashed the window with it)

In a device used again in Scream 3, one scene involves glass which you can pound on but the pounding can't be heard on the other side.  Does such glass exist?  I very, VERY much doubt it, but no matter, because even if it did, a moment later the killer pounds on the glass and, yes, we hear it loud and clear on the other side.

And then finally we get to the end, where we find out who's doing the killing, and...I don't really want to spoil it, so here's my game try.  There's a surprise here regarding who, but not in the way you think, and I think that's kind of neat.  Never mind that much of this conclusion really isn't surprising (and besides, you know how it'll turn out as soon as you realize that yeah, that killer really ISN'T going to shut up, possibly ever); this little bit caught me off guard, though I suppose there were plenty of hints earlier on, and no fewer than two characters should have recognized this person, weight loss or no.

Kevin "I always envisioned it as a trilogy!" Williamson's script has a few moments, like Arquette and Kennedy's conversation, or the inevitable casting of Tori Spelling in Stab. (funnier still, Owen Wilson in the same film, imitating Skeet Ulrich's slacker macho act to a hilarious tee)  But make no mistake, this is hurry-up-and-make-a-sequel-before-people-move-on-to-something-else writing all the way.

Scream 2 made a ton of cash, though its take dropped off quickly and it certainly lacked the legs of the original.  Inexplicably, it received as much critical acclaim as any horror movie I can think of in the past, oh, eight years or so; I wouldn't be the first to suggest it was largely just critics who didn't want to repeat the mistake of not being on board for Scream.  At any rate, it became possibly the most hated movie in alt.horror history.  I wouldn't say that Scream 2 is THAT bad, but bad is bad.  Nothing I can say can or should steer away the curious - I've always said, watch whatever piques your curiosity, cuz that curiosity isn't gonna go away just because I say it sucks.  All I'm sayin' is, you've been warned.

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