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Scream 2
**
Cinema
Releases - May 1,
1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Wes Craven. Written by Kevin Williamson.
Starring Neve Campbell, David
Arquette, Courteney Cox, Liev Schreiber, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jamie
Kennedy, Elise Neal, Jerry O'Connell, Jada Pinkett, Omar
Epps.
When I first heard that a sequel
was being made to Wes Craven's "Scream", I thought the result would be bad.
I felt that a sequel to the film would have few jokes in it, and would be
too serious. It would give credence to the countless people who claimed it
was a horror film, not a comedy, and that would be bad. I was given comfort,
though, when I saw the trailer for "Scream 2", as it's creatively
titled, because it looked like it would be a take on horror sequels like
the first movie was a take on the horror genre. After that, I looked forward
to "Scream 2", and it was disappointing to see that my first impression was
the correct one.
I'm not sure whether they are indeed trying to
validate the incorrect audience members, or they ran out of the best jokes
in the first movie. Either way, "Scream 2" just doesn't work. I waited in
it positively for some superb laughs, and waited, and waited, and waited...
until after an hour I finally realised that I wasn't going to get
them.
The film opens in the queue for a sneak preview
of the movie "Stab", which is about a bunch of kids in California town Woodsboro
being brutally slaughtered by movie freaks. Sound familiar? Of course it
does, it's the plot for "Scream". This is quite an ingenious plot device
because it turns "Scream 2" into a film that is about kids who go to scary
movies which are about kids who go to scary movies that contain kids going
to scary movies. Two audience members for "Stab" who are on a date get brutally
stabbed in the theater, starting off a series of copycat killings (copycatting
the killings in "Scream", that is) which form the basis of this film's horror
plot.
This ten-minute intro is pretty good, and did
not prepare me for disappointment at all. The couple make jokes like the
ones in "Scream", and the very concept of the "Stab" device provides a laugh
in itself. It's after this that the problems start.
We get reunited with the surviving kids from the
first movie, now in college. There's Sidney (Neve Campbell), again the female
lead, again the main target of violence. Randy (Jamie Kennedy), her film-geek
friend, who was able to hilariously predict the killers' next moves in the
first film by his knowledge of scary movies. The adult characters are also
present, like Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), the TV reporter, and Dewey (David
Arquette), the baby-faced cop.
Now the horror plot takes over, even in the dialogue,
which is a big mistake. Neve Campbell plays Sidney far too seriously, and
this time it doesn't make sense. She's not the innocent, air-headed virgin
she was in the original picture, now she's supposed to be alert and tough
as nails. Give me a break. Randy hasn't got any great, perceptive lines he
did in the first film, and he seems to have calmed down and matured -- making
his character pointless. Dewey leers and limps with deadly seriousness, for
no reason, and ferociously hunts for the truth instead of blundering as he
tries to help. This is utterly risible -- it's as if Nathan Lane was playing
Barry Sheck with stone-faced sincerity. Gale is also a character with reduced
energy -- she is no longer a hyper-active satire on the news media but simply
stuck in for continuity's sake.
There is hardly any self-knowing ridiculousness,
or conversation about movies, or skits at clichés that are about to
happen. There is just an endless, annoying hunt for a killer, the identity
of whom is mildly involving, but only because we're so restless we
might as well think about something. The first film drowned me with
its amazing comedy so much that I didn't think for two seconds about the
plot, and so the obvious ending did come as a surprise. Here, I couldn't
have cared less about it. In the end there turn out to be two killers, one
of whom did not come as a surprise at all, and one who is a character I couldn't
remember from any other point in the movie!
Comedies are supposed to start by making us laugh
and gradually become funnier and funnier until we're gasping. "Scream 2"
starts well, with some nice chuckles, but gets duller, becoming obsessed
with the McGuffin and forgetting what made "Scream" so special. The film
is almost worth recommending because the horror is just about watchable,
due to a cute cast and cute gore, and because of some snappy lines which
give a glimpse of what could have been. Examples.... "When did you start
smoking?" "It was when those nude pictures of her appeared on the Internet..."
"Hey! It was only my face, it was Jennifer Aniston's body!"......or..."Wanna
be up there with the big boys? Manson!... Bundy!... OJ!!". These demonstrate
the kind of sarcastic humour I was hoping for, but "Scream 2" is too serious
to be funny and too light-hearted to be scary. Some of the characters in
it talk about how sequels are inferior products, and the movie they're in
doesn't prove them wrong.
COPYRIGHT©
1998 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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