It’s a classic case of life imitating art imitating life.
I lived through this, okay? Life is life. It doesn’t imitate anything.
Once Scream had proven itself a bona-fide smash hit, it was inevitable that a sequel would be forthcoming and sure enough, the green light went off and Craven and company returned to film the sequel. Scream 2 would end up hitting theaters LESS THAN A YEAR after the first Scream debuted which is a brutally fast turnaround. Then there were the script leaks; a draft of the script got leaked on some new technology called the “Internet” and the filmmakers found themselves rewriting the film at a furious pace. Writer Kevin Williamson would later say that the script that leaked was a dummy script and that the killers in that script were never intended to really be the killers in the film; one thing that tends to support him in that is just how absolutely god-awfully stupid the solution was in that leaked script, but regardless of the exact details, most reports indicate that Scream 2 was being written and rewritten as the film was shot, actors sometimes only receiving their lines on the day the scenes were to be shot. This isn’t a great idea in any genre, but it is never a worse idea to be writing something as you’re filming it than when you’re filming a MURDER MYSTERY. Safe to say that Scream 2 was destined to be a disappointment at best and a train-wreck at worst. While Scream 2 does have the best killer reveal in the series so far, the most genuinely surprising culprit in a couple of ways, it has to be said that the best and biggest twist in Scream 2 is that it somehow turned out to be every bit as good as, and better in some ways than, its predecessor.
The film really takes the meta commentary up to an even higher level than the first one and I think that meta element is fresher here and has aged better than the meta commentary in the first film. This one introduces us to Stab, the in-universe horror movie based on the “true events” of Scream. You follow that? It’s more intuitive when you see it than when someone explains it to you. The cold open here takes place in a crowded movie theater as horror fans flock to see Stab and we’re treated to the first scene of Stab, a recreation of the cold open to Scream with Heather Graham playing “Casey Becker,” the character played by Drew Barrymore in Scream. You following this? It’s more intuitive when you see it than when someone tries to talk you through it. Regardless, this allows Scream 2 to parody the first film while also lampooning “true events” based horror movies. There’s a later scene where we get to see a snippet of Stab featuring “Sidney” and “Billy” and the cameos there are so good that I’m not even going to spoil them. And all of this is before we even get to the commentary this movie has on sequels. This script is even smarter and more layered than the script to the original Scream.
I suppose I should once again note that I’m going to try to avoid spoilers, but I will be talking about the cast and, you know, talking about the cast in this movie is going to backhandedly spoil the first movie since anyone in this movie can probably be assumed to have both survived the first movie and also not have been the killer in the first movie. The performances are all really great. Neve Campbell just continues to come in to her own as Sidney Prescott; it’s becoming one of the indelible horror performances for me in this movie. She’s a different person in this movie than she was in the first movie which makes sense, but it also allows this movie to actually feature more character development for Sidney. She is once again a very different character at the end of this movie than she is that the beginning. And the same is true for the other returning characters as well. I think Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Jamie Kennedy are all better in this movie than they were in the original Scream; the characters are growing and becoming less archetypal and more personal. They have more room to breathe here and the characters expand and, like Sidney, end up in different emotional places at the end of the film. I think that the way the recurring characters are handled by this franchise is overall a good example of how recurring characters should work; they don’t feel, by and large, and certainly not in this movie, like they’re just coming back because the franchise calls for it or that they’re just going through the same beats as they did in the last movie. The character writing is really sharp in this script. Roger Jackson’s performance as the voice of the killer is better than it was in the first one too.
The ensemble is even more stacked than the ensemble was in the first Scream. The cast is a veritable microcosm of the late nineties: Jada Pinkett Smith, Omar Epps, Rebecca Gayheart, Portia de Rossi, Joshua Jackson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laurie Metcalf, Jerry O’Connell, Timothy Olyphant, Heather Graham, those two mystery cameos I mentioned above . . . and they’re good in their roles, big or small may they be, though it’s worth saying that O’Connell, always good in the right role, is perhaps not in exactly the right role here and he whiffs a couple of moments, including one incredibly cheesy scene in the cafeteria. I particularly loved Liev Schreiber as Cotton Weary, the guy who originally went to prison for the murder of Sidney’s mother; there are a lot of ways you could take that character, but the film takes him in a different direction than I expected. He’s not thrilled to be exonerated or angry over the injustice he suffered; he sees his status as a public figure as something he can exploit for fame and he’s really a craven and unlikable character, not at all what I expected. And watch for the recently departed David Warner in a small role.
I think Scream 2 is overall just more entertaining than the first film. There’s one way in particular where the first Scream outdoes this one, but I’ll get to that in a second. This film is really where, at least in my opinion, Ghostface becomes an icon. He wasn’t really scary in the first movie, but he is in this one. There’s a phenomenal sequence of Ghostface pursuing a couple of characters through a deserted media building, through a series of sound-proof booths and recording studios and it’s incredibly tense. Ghostface moves like a predatory animal in this sequence and it’s really scary. This movie has some really fantastic set-pieces. An suspenseful scene in a police car is a real highlight. There’s a really shocking death scene, one of the best in the entire series, that really does come out of nowhere, literally out of a clear blue sky, happening very suddenly out in the open and in public on a bright, sunny day. And a rehearsal for a theatrical performance is really intense and suspenseful, more stylishly filmed than anything in the first film; as Sid catches glimpses of Ghostface amongst her hooded co-stars during a highly choreographed sequence, you’re left genuinely unsure if Ghostface is really there or if Sid’s just finally losing it. And I’d say that, of the franchise so far, this movie has the best killer reveal; it’s the most genuinely surprising killer and it comes along with the revelation of a fact that’s been right in front of you the whole time, but you just missed it.
I would say that, while this movie is more entertaining, it does lack some of the horror edge of the first film. This movie expands the cast and ups the body count and it also lampshades that this is basically what horror sequels do, so fine, but it does make some of the characters feel shallower than the characters in the first film. This film doesn’t take the time to quite linger over the violence the way the first film did either. Nothing here is as disturbing as the last couple of minutes of the cold open to the first film and nothing here has the psychotic, high-impact feeling of the climax of the first film either. The violence is just a little more weightless here. But I suppose the trade off between fun entertainment and dark horror is always a give-and-take with these movies, so I’m not upset about it. I do think it’s worth a mention as one way that the first film does still outdo this one.
As it is, Scream 2 is a real knockout though of high energy entertainment. There’s some time spent in the movie talking about those few sequels that actually stand up next to the original. Scream 2 puts itself right in that conversation. 4 stars.
tl;dr – faster-paced, more entertaining with an even sharper script, Scream 2 outdoes the original in some key ways, though the original remains the darker and more disturbing of the two. 4 stars.