Scream 2

A film review by James Brundage - Copyright © 1998 Filmcritic.com

Two Words: Flying Camel.

Ha! I got you. You thought it would be "Good Sequel," didn't you? The reason I say Flying Camel is because, in an ordinary universe, Flying Camels do exist (although they do in Wim Wenders' The End of Violence). In the ordinary universe, good sequels are just as rare.

So Scream 2 is a flying camel, or, in layman's terms, a good sequel.

The operative word here is good. Scream was downright brilliant. Scream 2 is somewhat enlightened. Scream was moderately creepy. Scream 2 has all of the creepiness of my Great-Aunt (okay, so it's a bad example).

If a good sequel is defined on the curve of movies in general, than Scream 2 is a good sequel. If it is defined on the curve with the previous film, Scream 2 is just an OK sequel.

Scream 2 takes everyone who survived the first movie and brings them to Windsor College, where they are all set to face the same dilemma again. Included in the script are plenty of nice postmodern attacks on the horror genre, but the sequel ends up falling victim to a plot twist midway that I cannot reveal. Suffice it to say that Scream 2 ceases to be funny in its third act and tries to rely on horror. Because of this, it doesn't quite end up working.

Still, the movie is worth it for the first half. At least for that period, it is a good sequel. And, like the last one, we get plenty of our favorite people killed off, like… (Did you really think I was gonna tell you?)

Scream 2 is enjoyable. It does disprove the rule that "sequels suck." It does not make a superior movie.

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Rating

3.0 out of 5 Stars

Cast and Crew

  • Director: Wes Craven
  • Producer: Cathy Konrad, Marianne Maddalena
  • Screenwriter: Kevin Williamson
  • Stars: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jamie Kennedy, Duane Martin, Laurie Metcalf, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant, Jada Pinkett, Liev Schreiber, Rebecca Gayheart, Portia de Rossi, Omar Epps, Tori Spelling, Heather Graham
  • MPAA Rating: R