What a difference a year makes. After the overwhelming (and surprising) success of Wes Craven’s original Scream, which grossed a massive $173 million against a $15 million budget and effectively reinvigorated the long-dormant slasher genre, Dimension/Miramax Films managed to bring the whole gang back together for Scream 2 with even better results.
The sequel, released on Dec. 12, 1997 — exactly one week before James Cameron’s Titanic began its legendary voyage — and grossed a massive $32.9 million in its opening weekend en route to $101.1 million in the U.S. and $172.4 million worldwide.
Here’s the official plot synopsis: “Sidney (Neve Campbell) and tabloid reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) survived the events of the first Scream, but their nightmare isn’t over. When two college students are murdered at a sneak preview of ‘Stab,’ a movie based on the events from the first film, it’s clear a copycat killer is on the loose. Sidney and Gail, as well as fellow survivors Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) and Randy (Jamie Kennedy) have to find out who is behind this new murder spree, before they all end up dead.”
I recall watching Scream 2 on VHS in preparation for the yet-to-be-released Scream 3 my senior year of high school. And while none in the franchise ever truly blew me away, I enjoyed the sequel more than any of the others for its clever plot and reliance on sequel troupes.
Also, from a technical perspective, Scream 2 is leaps abound above its predecessor — even though the budget only grew by roughly $10 million — displaying more competence with its shots and action sequences. Even the acting takes a step forward, as everyone involved reacts more appropriately to the horrific events taking place around them.
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Scream 2’s opening sequence is brilliant, if not a tad long-winded. Before the title reveal, we meet a young couple, Phil and Maureen, played by Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett Smith, respectively, who anxiously await a showing of Stab, the film within a film based on the events of Scream. The pair debate the merits of slasher films, the lack of African American representation in the genre, throw some shade at the “Sandra Bullock s—” playing down the street, and give a call out to Entertainment Weekly, which represented roughly 90% of our pop culture news at the time.
Inside the theater, excited moviegoers dressed in Ghostface costumes and wielding fake, blood-soaked knives, run amok, showing very little reverence for Stab’s true-life events — clearly, a comment on audience fixation with violence as entertainment.
Stab starts and we are thrust back into the events that transpired at the beginning of Scream, albeit with Heather Graham standing in for Drew Barrymore, and the location now an exotic mansion boasting a swimming pool, its lights providing an eerie atmosphere. The events play out in a similar manner as the original film, albeit with more intensity and technical prowess — an aspect mirrored by Scream 2.
“B—-, hang the phone up and star-69 his ass,” Maureen hollers at the screen as attendees around her hiss. Maureen isn’t privy to slasher rules, and her inability to see past the limits of the genre’s creativity, in turn, limits her ability to appreciate the film, which, in turn, makes us less sympathetic towards her person.
Meanwhile, Heather Graham’s character undresses and the crowd, including Phil (much to Maureen’s chagrin), goes wild. This was an interesting bit because it plays to the notion that we, the audience, prefer the hyper-reality presented by film over the actual reality of life. Sitting right next to Phil is a young, beautiful woman who wants nothing more than a romantic night with her boyfriend. Except, he continually rejects her advances in favor of artificial entertainment; and we, the audience, are doing exactly the same thing waiting to see what sort of grisly demise awaits Phil and Maureen.
At any rate, Maureen goes to get popcorn (during the first scene?), gets scared by a Ghostface-wearing Phil, and then returns to the movie (which, surprisingly, has yet to move past the first action sequence) alone. Phil heads to the bathroom where he is quickly killed by the real Ghostface, who assumes Phil’s jacket and heads back to the theater and proceeds to stab Maureen in front of an oblivious audience so consumed with the events onscreen that they can’t discern reality from fiction.
This pre-credits sequence takes just under 12 minutes to unfold, and perfectly sets the mood for the remaining film, even if the rest of Scream 2 never quite reaches the same level of brilliance.
We see Sidney some two years after the events of Scream as she nonchalantly deals with a prank phone call (using the same Ghostface voice, no less) using Caller ID, which had become a popular household item during that time, effectively spelling the end of the prank-call era. We meet a supporting cast consisting of eventual stars, namely Sarah Michelle Gellar (who enjoyed massive success with TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scream knockoff I Know What You Did Last Summer in March and October of the same year), Elise Neal, Timothy Olyphant, Jerry O’Connell, Portia de Rossi, and Liev Schreiber (expanding on his brief cameo in Scream).
There’s a great scene in which members of a film class debate the merits of the film sequel and struggle to find a follow-up that trumps the original — a bit only undone by Randy’s flub of the Aliens line.
After a lengthy re-introduction of the main characters — including Gale Weathers, whose book about the events of Scream led to Stab; Dewey, who now sports a limp and a disdain for all things media related; and Randy, who uses movies as a means to understand his own, real-life slasher story — we finally arrive at our second action scene. This time, we follow Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Cici as she tries to dispatch The Voice, but quickly comes under Ghostface’s blade, a bit that felt more obligatory than necessary.
This sequence gives way to another chase scene in which Sidney must evade Ghostface. Jerry O’Connell’s Derek, aka Sidney’s boyfriend, pursues the masked villain but sustains a cut to his arm. Naturally, after the events of the first film, in which Sidney’s then-boyfriend Billy pretended to die to throw her off his scent, we’re suspicious of anything to do with our main heroine’s admirers. Luckily, Sidney shares our thoughts and grows wary of Derek’s near-perfect charm, leaving the poor guy pining after her for the rest of the film.
At one point he sings to her in front of a packed lunchroom, and if the moment comes across like a cheap knockoff of a similar scene from Tony Scott’s Top Gun, well, that’s because it is — but Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson tell us it is … lazy or inspired? You decide.
We also get more Stab clips, featuring Luke Wilson as Billy and Tori Spelling (in a clever callback to Scream) as Sidney.
I love how Dewey and Randy watch a scene from their lives play out on TV. How weird would it be to see yourself played by someone else? Any number of shows and films have played with this idea, perhaps most memorably on Seinfeld, but too often we overlook the reality behind the fiction. Imagine a survivor of Pearl Harbor watching Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, or Mark Zuckerberg watching David Fincher’s The Social Network … moments of your life played for mass entertainment. I imagine the experience would be equal parts thrilling and appalling.
Anyways, we get a bit with Randy explaining the rules of the slasher sequel, such as higher body counts and more elaborate death scenes, to Dewey, and there’s a humorous bit where the duo try to use their intellect to figure out who the killer is, effectively mirroring the audience’s attempts to do the same without much luck.
That’s because, really, the killer could be anybody. Ghostface doesn’t assume any specific trait that links him with any of the film’s characters, and mostly behaves like a supernatural entity. Since everyone has a realistic motive, Scream 2 could end with any cast member under the mask with minimal change to the story or climax — and the audience would happily continue to consume the product.
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And really, that’s the downfall of this otherwise fascinating sequel — the ending. After all the buildup and carefully executed death scenes, including, memorably, Randy’s death-by-van-abduction, the film offers up two antagonists who induce more shrugs than gasps.
The first, Billy’s mother, played by Laurie Metcalf, appears throughout the film as a Gale Weathers knockoff named Debbie Salt. The second, Mickey, pops in and out of the plot without much to do other than foreshadowing his involvement by holding a video camera in every scene. Each has their own personal motives for doing what they did, but neither is as interesting (or messed up) as Billy or Stu at the end of Scream.
By contrast, the more we learn about Billy’s mother or Mickey, the less interesting they become.
Seemingly aware of this lackluster outcome, Craven goes for broke and stages a long-winded action climax atop a musical stage consisting of fake thunder and lightning effects that drags on for far too long. I did like the way Mickey goads Sidney into believing Derek is one of the killers, though, and thought Campbell did a stellar job in the sequence:
Otherwise, Scream 2 ends in a similar manner as Scream with the heroes wounded but ultimately victorious, which feels more redundant than reinvigorating.
Even so, up until that point, Scream 2 packs some heat thanks to intense sequences such as the bit where Sidney has to crawl over her attacker (rather than just beat him to death while he’s unconscious) in order to escape a wrecked car:
I also loved the moment where Dewey gets stabbed while Gale stumbles about in a soundproof booth:
I hated Randy’s death, as he felt like an essential piece of the Scream puzzle but I supposed that was the point — to shock viewers by killing off a main protagonist:
Finally, shout out to Liev Schreiber for his performance as Cotton, a young man trying to make the best of his dire situation. There’s a scene in which he confronts Sidney in a library that’s both chilling and kind of sad, especially when you find out he’s actually a pretty good dude:
Scream 2 doesn’t transcend the genre the way Scream did one year prior, but it certainly stands as a worthy sequel that actually surpasses the original in terms of quality — even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing.
