Scream 2

Review

Where Scream (1996) is a love letter to horror, Scream 2 is a love letter to shitty horror and non-horror sequels, and I absolutely loved it. This movie did everything a sequel should do, it upped the stakes, upped the kill count, kept the characters consistent and lovable, introduced new lovable characters, and above all else maintained the perfect balance of scary and funny that the original movie achieved. The plot stays relatively the same but like honestly, in the slasher genre, when was the last time we had innovation in a sequel? People should just be happy that this movie was as good as it was because other slasher franchises have proved that that is not a given.

Like I said, the plot is relatively the same with new killers acting under the ghostface moniker and a somewhat new cast of characters to round out our death fodder for the movie.

This movie’s opening scene, while not as iconic and as instantly intense, was still very well done and harrowing, it set this movie up to be a little less light-hearted than the original Scream with the way that Jada Pinkett Smith’s character collapses dead in front of the screen playing Stab. It’s a very striking image and I think it works really well for such a striking film.

I really liked the new cast of characters and I thought that all the returning characters returned consistently and I continued to care about them. Since it’s 4 returning characters and 5-6 main new characters it feels pretty balanced with what you already know and I was never struggling to learn characters’ names which is usually an issue for me. Considering the original main cast was 7 characters, the new cast felt similarly intimate and it’s probably the only sequel to not have a bloated cast. There were a few characters here or there which were just death fodder but the movie didn’t use these character’s presence as an excuse to pull punches which I think is why I don’t mind them.

As for pulling punches, this movie made sure all of it’s punches landed full fucking force. This is probably the most heart-wrenching film in the Scream franchise, Randy’s death, Dewey’s assumed death, Hallie’s death, and Sid’s boyfriend’s death were all really sad and it made me so sympathetic to Sid because your watching as everyone she cares about gets brutally murdered, and if you feel this sad imagine how she must feel. I definitely liked the more downtrodden, morose tone, I think it worked and added some needed contrast from the first. Despite this darker tone though, I still think this movie managed to be pretty funny.

This movie was lowkey hilarious, it’s simultaneously a critique of sequels and a critique of college films so the humor ends up coming from two angles. You’ve got the creepy, cult-like sorority girls and you also have Randy’s fanatacism and Gale’s cutting wit which are both brought back from the original. Overall, while the movie ends up feeling more traumatic for the characters the movie never forgets it’s purpose as a critique of sequels and it’s place as a semi-funny horror which I appreciate.

One thing I didn’t really mention in my original view but I also noticed in this one, Scream does chase scenes pretty well, especially in the first two iterations. Within a Scream chase scene, you can feel the characters fighting for their lives and they never make stupid decisions because these characters really feel like they want to survive, Ghostface is also a highlight because these scenes show how human he is, when he gets shit thrown at him he gets hurt and I appreciate that because it’s a departure from a lot of the superhuman slashers from the 70s and 80s, cough cough Micheal and Jason.

I really like the inclusion of Stab in this movie, all of these movies have a touch of commentary about the way that the media will capitalize on real-life tragedy no matter how many people have been or will be hurt by it. In the movie, Stab is Sidney’s real life basically recreated word for word for people to critique. It’s horrific but she just deals with it, she deals with the calls taunting her with Ghostface’s voice and in the end it’s only due to the sensationalization of her story by the media which causes her to be a target again and again and again. This movie probably has my favorite inclusion of Stab in the franchise but I’ll talk about my issues with it more in the other reviews because none of it applies here.

Oh and another thing I appreciate about Stab in this movie, it’s not a shot for shot recreation in this movie, in future movies it becomes closer to that but in this movie the scene we see is just inspired by the opening in the original. It makes Stab fit better in the purpose of critiquing the horror genre when it’s more loosely inspired because when it becomes that shot for shot retelling, it’s almost like it’s critiquing itself which I feel weakens the series because it feels almost like ‘admitting a weakness’ even if I don’t think said weakness is there. Anyways, all this to say, I liked Stab’s inclusion in this film.

For me I think my only issue with this film was the killers. I didn’t mind Mickey, he was basically Stu 2.0 but I liked the fact that the movie leaned into how fucking insane Mickey and by extension Stu was. I also found it interesting how Mickey’s motives are completely contrary to Billy and Stu’s, like the iconic line is “Movie’s don’t create psychos” and yet Mickey looked at their influence and was like, ‘yep I’m going to blame the movies’ which is so funny to me.

However, I was very, I guess I’ll say, dissatisfied with the second killer being Billy’s mom. It just felt weird considering she left Billy behind when she left her husband, like if she really cared about Billy wouldn’t she bring him with her?? Idk but her motivations were just weird to me.

Overall, I think this movie was a really worthy successor to the original. It tooks some risks by going for a darker tone and I think that it worked for the best, despite the numerous amount of script changes this movie went through I think it flowed pretty well and even it wasn't as perfect as the original it was still a really good movie that I would love to watch again.