Harefooted Halloween: Scream 2

What I Liked: Famously Drew Barrymore dies in the opening of the first movie as most likely a nod to Psycho.  Dispatching your biggest name star right at the top tends to throw the audience for a loop.  They continue that trend here by knocking off several well established actors in the first act who would certainly have stuck around longer in any other horror picture.  Not only that but they also kill some of the survivors from the previous film signaling to you that no one is safe.

Ok this is a weird one but Dewey’s (David Arquette (part time wrestler)) theme music is the same as Broken Arrow the year before.  It’s that twangy heavily reverbed guitar that sounds like it’s straight out of a western.  It was supposed to be temp music but they ended up leaving it in.  Marco Beltrami did write a theme for Dewey only for it to be ignored by the producers.

What I Didn’t Like: Uninteresting plot.  We follow Sidney (Neve Campbell (Titanic: Blood and Steel)) and the leftovers from the first picture wander around a college campus while Ghostface does his thang.  So more of the same.  Nothing new is done with the characters or the story.  This could’ve been a result of the script being leaked during production forcing major rewrites.  We’ll never really know how that film would’ve turned out but from what I gather it wasn’t a significant departure from the established formula and may have even been worse.  It seems the biggest problem they had was changing around who the original killer was supposed to be and removing some extra plot twists.

The meta stuff doesn’t work very well here.  They double down on it too by having the events in the first film turned into a movie called Stab.  All we see is the opening (directed by Robert Rodriguez (cool!)) that’s a recreation of the original only they purposely make it sillier by sexing and cheesing it up.  We’re getting a little too into the franchise’s own head with this in my opinion.  And instead of horror movie references they do sequel references this time because this is the sequel, get it?  I’ll admit that’s kinda clever but it comes across more like a homework assignment than the zealous showcase of horror fandom of its precursor.

Ghostface is even more of a klutz than the first time.  For example when he’s chasing Sidney around her house he plows into an armchair like a charging bull knocking it, the side table and a lamp over.  He looks like such a fuckin’ goof.  Why couldn’t he push the chair out of the way or something?  Why does he have to crash into it and flip over?  While that got a good laugh out of me I don’t think these moments are supposed to be funny.  The other crap like the sequel talk and Jamie Kennedy’s (Three Kings) impressions are the comedy bits.  I believe whenever Ghostface is on screen shit’s supposed to be serious.

Overall Impressions: This is a much blander version of its predecessor and more like what that film probably should’ve been if the stars hadn’t aligned.

What they establish with this installment is there’s a new killer (or killers) wreaking havoc and Ghostface didn’t turn into a supernatural entity.  This means the mystery starts all over again.  That’s fine however, expectations need to be tempered.  Turning at least one of your main characters into a serial killer each time is kind of ridiculous.  It’s not like anyone can just flip and all of a sudden they’re a blood thirsty psychotic but that’s what these movies are laying out.

I don’t really know what else to say about this one because it’s sorta boring.  The picture rhymes to a degree with the first and that’s tricky to do well.  Most of the time it’ll be an obvious rehash which is the case here.  I’m disappointed the filmmakers played it safe instead of taking a risk with a new direction.