Scream 2

Scream was great.  It mocked horror cliches, but also paid tribute to them; the script was sassy and clever; the villain had a fairly unique gimmick, but was still anonymous enough --- with an easily removed costume and small weapon --- for there to be a legitimate whodunnit mystery.  All in all, it is a fun watch.  Inevitably, a sequel was greenlit and filmed as soon as possible.  Scream 2 came out less than a year after the original film, and expectations were high.  How high?  The female cast were featured in a Rolling Stone cover article:

With these choices, it is obvious that Tori Spelling should be on the magazine cover.  Whaaaa...?!?

I don't really follow what exactly is supposed to be going on in that picture --- are they happily cleaning up after a triple homicide? --- but it does help prove one thing: when it comes to sequels, dumb things happen.

In an unusual bit of theatrical time-keeping, the events of Scream 2 takes place two years after Scream, even though the actual films were released less than a year apart.  Sidney (Neve Campbell) is now in college and has a group of friends that have not tried to murder her (yet), just a reminder that college is way more fun than high school.  Unfortunately for Sidney, heartless bitch/reporter Gail Weathers (Courteney Cox) wrote a book about the murders that took place in Scream and the book was turned into a movie called Stab that is just premiering.  That means Sidney gets a lot of prank phone calls from people mimicking the killers.  Thankfully, Sidney learned from her mistakes in the last film and nips that annoying subplot in the bud.

At the premiere of Stab --- the clips of which are pretty amusing --- the theater gives away promotional Ghostface costumes.  That seems like a pretty good idea for about ten minutes, until one of the many people dressed as Ghostface commits a double homicide in the theater.

Worst.  Glory hole.  Ever.

Of course, since this is a horror sequel, that is only the beginning.  Apparently, the killer is obsessed with the murders in Scream, which in turn makes the killing of Sidney a top priority.  That also puts targets on the backs of all her friends, too. 

Two out of three expendables characters in this scene realize it

With all that in mind, it occurs to Sidney and her friends that it is very likely that the killer has infiltrated their clique.  But which one of them is the killer question mark/exclamation mark/question mark.

The acting in Scream 2 is all things to all people, if that means that it's a crap shoot.  I actually thought Neve Campbell improved slightly in her return to the role of Sidney.  It is difficult being a likable horror protagonist, but Campbell was able to portray a fairly intelligent and tough woman convincingly.  Again.  Of the returning characters, Courteney Cox saw the most positive change.  This time, she actually shows human emotions and I wasn't necessarily hoping she would die.  She also had the biggest character makeover of the group, so she didn't look quite as trashy in this film.  Jamie Kennedy reprised his role as the movie-obsessed nerdling and shocked me again by being decently entertaining.  If you cut the scene where he does mediocre impressions, I would even say that I liked him in this movie.  David Arquette was okay, too, although I don't quite understand why the filmmakers chose to give him an exaggerated limp and Bob Dole hand.  I guess it was a red herring, and they did give a line of dialogue to explain it, but Arquette isn't a good enough acgor to play disabled and not have it be hilarious.

"Everybody knows you never go full retard"

Of the newbies, Jerry O'Connell and Timothy Olyphant had the most screen time.  O'Connell was a little vacant, but it fit his character.  Olyphant does not play a lawman of any sort, and if you know his filmography at all, you know that is not a good sign.  He gets to overact, which is fun enough to watch, but it wasn't anything special.  Liev Schreiber didn't have any lines in Scream, so his character felt new in the sequel.  Schreiber wasn't great.  His character is tough to like, and Schreiber was charmless in a complex part.  Elise Neal was inoffensive, but her character was extremely bland.  Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jada Pinkett Smith were both okay as dual screaming victims.  Gellar's character was a little stupid, but not too annoying.  Pinkett Smith was extremely obnoxious, combining knowitallism with being a person who talks throughout the movie in the theater.

I'm offended by stereotypes, too, Jada

Omar Epps didn't come off much better, with his main characteristics being insensitivity and cheapness, but he did have a hilariously stupid death scene, and that counts for something.  Laurie Metcalf was annoying as the suspiciously high-profile actor playing a relatively minor character, in grand Scooby-Doo tradition.  Rebecca Gayheart and Portia de Rossi were stereotypical sorority girls, although de Rossi's eyebrows did provide some of the film's biggest scares.  In fact, all of the sorority girls were horrifically dull, with only Sarah Michelle Gellar achieving anything beyond "generically bitchy."

My favorites are "judging bitch" (back, right) and "smarmy bitch" (far right)

There are also some entertaining cameos.  Pre-Dawson's Creek Joshua Jackson had a few solid lines in film class, and casting David Warner in a minor role was a nice nod to classic horror movies.  But the most entertaining cameos belonged to the movie-within-a-movie, Stab.  Heather Graham stretched her skills by playing a brainless blonde bimbo, and (following up on a gag in the first film) Tori Spelling played the movie version of Sidney.  Both were chuckle-worthy, but Luke Wilson was hilarious in the two lines he had, doing a surprisingly good job mocking Skeet Ulrich in Scream.

Wes Craven returned to Scream 2 as director and writer Kevin Williamson also returned.  With the creative forces behind the original film, as well as the surviving cast, all the pieces were in place to make Scream 2 a great sequel.  That didn't quite happen, though.  Craven did a solid job juggling a gigantic cast, and I thought the returning cast all acted better in this sequel...ignoring Arquette's limping.  Thanks to the advent of Caller ID, though, the best part of Ghostface's routine --- the phone calls --- largely lost its effect.  That meant that we had a silent killer that was missing his calling card. 

Yes, that was bad.  I'm sorry.  You may resume.

Sure, there were a few phone calls, but most of them were blatant I-want-you-to-know-I'm-watching-you ploys, with only Gellar's scene actually involving tension or scares.  Williamson's script, which was the driving force of Scream definitely feels less impressive in Scream 2.  I realize that the script had to be written quickly, but this just feels lazy.  There is less wittiness this time, and what smarts it has are largely recycled.  Did you like the characters asking each other who the killer is, using traditional horror movie logic?  Did you like the sassy female explaining how stupid horror movies are?  Did you like the killer with an incredibly flimsy motive?  Good, because Scream 2 gives you an extra helping of them.

Oh, you liked the phone scenes?  Well...sorry about that.

The kills aren't very much fun, either.  The sheer idiocy of Omar Epps' death --- the combination of stabbing through a stall and Omar having his face pressed right up to it AND doing the stabbing blind --- doesn't even compare to the boombox-toting hip hop dance troupe inadvertently covering up a murder on the quad.  That was jaw-droppingly stupid.  The script has all sorts of holes and terrible plot devices that stick out, scene after scene.  My least favorite scene was the car scene.  Craven does what he can to milk it of every ounce of suspense, but it's so horribly contrived that I just got mad and started rooting for the killer.  Almost as bad is the "everyone with a cell phone must be tackled" scene, where the potential murder victims conveniently forget that the person they're looking for should have some sort of voice-altering device, along with a phone, in their hands.  Ugh.  And then there's the "subtle" clue that tips you off as to the identity of one of the killers.  Oh!  And the second killer?  Yeah, I get the motivation, but if killer #2 is supposed to have killed more than one person in this movie, I'm calling bullshit.  There are a few moments of amusing self-awareness, like the Stab clips and some of Randy's scenes, that feel smart and clever, but they are sadly rare.  This script and plot, as a whole, kind of suck.  They're not godawful, because horror fans know you can do much much much worse, but this was extremely disappointing, coming from the team that made the original so much fun.

The original Scream had some violence and gore, but the light tone kept it from feeling too explicit.  Scream 2 doesn't really amp either up much.  I would say there is a similar amount of gore (with the quad murder being the most gruesome) and only a few more kills.  The set pieces for these scenes weren't that great, with the stage being the best of the bunch; I guess that makes the soundproofed room the worst, because they treated it like a maze instead of an auditory game of cat and mouse.

Look at Ghostface, Courteney.  He's as afraid of you as you are of him.

I suppose that there is enough violence to keep audiences interested, with ten kills overall, but something is missing.  Part of the problem is that some of the kills --- specifically the policemen --- seemed far too easy.  Another is that some of the showcased kills feel a little cheap.  I get it, serial killers don't have to be gentlemen, but at least three characters died while not looking at their killer.  I probably wouldn't care about that if the kills were more memorable or if the script kept things funny, but that's what happens to horror movies when the plot leaves you bored: you start thinking.  And that is rarely good for horror films.

"You know that thing where I frequently show off a movie camera?  You probably shouldn't think too hard about that."

I don't know.  I feel like I'm being too harsh on Scream 2.  I didn't hate the movie.  I was just expecting it to be a lot better.  That was frustrating, because there are a few genuinely good moments in this movie, and I'm glad that the more obvious suspects weren't the killers.  This is a mostly competent horror movie, I have to admit.  I just didn't enjoy it much.

Scream

I didn't grow up in a family that watched horror movies.  Aside from an occasional sleepover, I didn't watch horror movies until I was in college.  The movie that convinced me that I was, maybe, missing something was Scream.  Toward the end of my senior year in high school, a friend invited me over to watch a movie and she chose Scream.  I agreed, but was wary.  I wasn't trying to impress this girl, but I didn't want to embarrass myself either, by wetting my pants or shrieking like a schoolgirl.  For some unfathomable reason, I just assumed those were the options open to me.  But then I watched the movie and did not shriek --- it's none of your damn business about the pants-wetting --- but instead really enjoyed myself.  Seventeen years and three sequels have passed since its release; how has Scream held up?

Scream opens with one of the more famous scenes in modern horror.  Casey (Drew Barrymore) is home alone when she receives a phone call.  Casey doesn't recognize the caller's voice, but he is playful and a little flirty, so she goes along with it.  The caller asks what her favorite scary movie is (and she somehow didn't choose Poison Ivy?!?) and everyone is having a good time...until the caller lets it slip that he's watching Casey.  In fact, the caller has captured her boyfriend and will kill him, unless Casey plays a sort of horror movie trivia game over the phone.  How did she do?  Let's just say that you don't want Casey on your Trivial Pursuit team.

"Orange!  No, *sob* red!"

It seems that the brutal slaying of Casey and her boyfriend were not the first of their kind in this area; a year ago, Sydney's (Neve Campbell) mother had been murdered and the case became a media phenomenon.  But, since high schoolers are sociopaths on their good days, Casey's presumed friends aren't terribly affected by the crime.  Instead, Sydney and her boyfriend, Billy (Skeet Ulrich), are more worried about their sex-free relationship; Stuart (Matthew Lillard) and Tatum (Rose McGowan) are concerned over who can be more stereotypically 90s;

The answer is "nipples"

and the media-oversaturated Randy (Jamie Kennedy) sees the events as a direct parallel to horror movies.  Against all odds, it turns out that Randy is right.  The killer is following horror movie logic, which means that people who break the cardinal "rules" of slasher flicks (promiscuous teens, people who announce that they will "be right back" when going somewhere alone, etc.) will pay for their sins.

On the surface, Scream is kind of a sketchy idea.  A horror movie about a killer who loves horror movies, and victims who are aware of horror movie cliches?  There is a high potential for snottiness and finger-quotes irony in that pitch.  Thankfully, director Wes Craven had already toyed with this notion in his last horror film, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and got that out of the way.  Craven, along with writer Kevin Williamson, did a very good job keeping Scream from succumbing to its potential weaknesses.  The script had clever dialogue and a reasonably likable (by horror standards) lead character.  Craven directed his relatively young cast well, and none of the featured characters seemed terribly obnoxious or paper-thin.

Well, nobody was unusually obnoxious

There are several bits in this movie that Craven handles expertly.  The opening scene is probably (and justifiably) the most famous, but pretty much every subsequent extended sequence with the killer is well-balanced and suspenseful.  As a whole, the script's efforts to be funny undercut any prolonged attempt at creating atmosphere or a sinister tone, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Scream works because it is light and funny and because it plays along with the tropes that horror fans have known about for years.  I revisited this film, expecting the movie to have aged noticeably, but the only things showing their age are some of the costume choices.

Her "Dancing in the Dark" outfit has aged better than this

Well, okay...there is one noticeably stupid moment in this movie: the killer attacking Sidney in the bathroom in the high school.  For a killer that chose his moments pretty well in the rest of the movie, that just seemed gratuitous.

One of the things that separates Scream from its slasher movie brethren is its cast.  In the 80s and early 90s, a lot of noteworthy actors started out in horror movies, but established talent didn't stick around.  There isn't much prestige or acting challenge in the role of "Bust Campy Councilor #2."  Thanks to its script, though, Scream was able to attract some reasonably well-known talent.  The biggest name in the movie at the time (and even now) was Drew Barrymore, who was in the midst of her "bad girl" career renaissance.  Even better than having a big name actress was the fact that Barrymore took a role similar to Janet Leigh's in Psycho; by taking a smaller, more memorable role and nailing it, Barrymore set Scream up for success.  The rest of the cast is not quite as good, but not bad, either.  Neve Campbell's character has some angst, but she wasn't out of her depth when articulating those emotions, or showing a reasonable amount of intelligence.  I typically ignore people who clearly don't wash their hair in odd-numbered months, but Skeet Ulrich wasn't half bad either.

That shirt will get washed before that hair

Rose McGowan doesn't really do much, which is about par for course with her.  I will give her credit for having the stupidest death in the movie; if your character is boring in a horror movie, it's good to strive for a memorable kill scene.  She's really the worst actor in this movie, and that is shocking, given this cast.  The typically obnoxious David Arquette comes off fairly cute and likable.  Courteney Cox played a fairly one-dimensional character, but at least her character served a purpose in the plot. 
Jamie Kennedy, who has never not been terrible, is actually okay; granted, he is just acting as a mouthpiece for the writer, pointing out all the horror movie cliches that Kevin Williamson wanted to mock, but credit where it's due.  Why it was decided that Kennedy should wear pastel hush puppies and do Jerry Lewis impersonations, I do not know, but the 90s were a very ironic time.  Even the always (ALWAYS!) annoying Matthew Lillard played his part well.

Maybe he should get stabbed in more movies?

There are a few teeny-tiny roles that are worth pointing out, as well.  Henry Winkler had some lines and a death scene, even though his role was uncredited.  Less obvious was Linda Blair's cameo, but the best bit part went to Wes Craven himself, as the Freddy Krueger-looking school janitor.  That was great.  Oh, and Liev Schreiber is also in the movie, but he doesn't actually say or do anything aside from glare, so he barely counts.

When it comes to the classic horror stuff, the sex and violence, Scream does some interesting things.  This is a violent movie, no doubt.  We see a few people getting disemboweled and there is a good amount of stabbing.  In other words, a lot of fake blood was spilled in Scream.

The worst was the blood swirlie Campbell got

Maybe it's the humor in the script, or maybe it is the fact that most of the kills aren't especially ridiculous, aside from Rose McGowan's, but it just doesn't feel all that violent to me.  Still, the blend of violence and humor keeps it interesting, even in the late-second-act wasteland that can drag down a lot of slasher pics.  While there isn't any gratuitous nudity, the script does speak of the evils of teenage sex; somehow, the self-awareness of the script is almost as enjoyable as random boobage.  The strangest thing about Scream is the fact that the killer is so bland.  When you hear the voice over the telephone, he is charismatic, funny, and a little frightening.  When you see Ghostface in the flesh, though, he's underwhelming.

Look at that face!  It looks like he's apologizing!

Ghostface (Killah) isn't a bad villian, per say, but Scream isn't iconic because of him.  Scream was a hit --- and is now working its way toward "classic" status --- because of the writing and the wit.  That's not a knock on the series, by any means, but it is a knock on Ghostface.

All in all, I was genuinely impressed with how well Scream stood the test of time.  Even though it has had three sequels and revitalized slashed movies in the late 90s, it still feels fresh.  The writing is still fun, and even the presence of a moderately anonymous killer doesn't dampen its impact.