Scream 2

B
Directed by Wes Craven
Running Time: 1:58

Scream 2 had to be one of the most anticipated films of 1997. And now that the time has finally come, you won't be dissapointed. Picking up two years after the original, we find young Sydney in college, with her friend Randy (Jamie Kennedy, the horror movie buff) and some new friends she's picked up along the way (including Jerry O'Connell as her new boyfriend). Reporter Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) is also back. Seems she's written a book about Sydney and her life, and it's been turned into a movie called Stab! At the premiere of Stab! a couple of people are killed, and everyone thinks its all starting over again. To the aid of young Sydney comes Dewey (David Arquette) who has seen better days. Soon people all over campus are being killed by someone (or is it someones) in a Scream mask. Who is it this time? Everyone's a suspect, and everyone seems to have a motive.

The only real difference between Scream 2 and the original, is now you're sort of ready for the twists and turns. Director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson still serve up horror cliches, then shoot them down, but it's not as unexpected as before. But that doesn't mean the movie isn't as fun as the first. You still can't guess who the killer (or is it killers) is until they decide to tell you (although I was a little dissapointed in the ending). And the movie does slow down a little in the middle. Just before going to see Scream 2 I watched a copy of the original that had Craven and Williamson talking about the movie as it was happening. They mentioned that one of the producers told them they needed to kill someone off in the middle (turned out to be the principal) because you couldn't have a horror film where no one died for half an hour, and I wish they had done something like that here. The movie is still filled with pop-culture references (how many movies can mention Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and the fact that The Empire Strikes back wasn't a sequel but a continuation of a trilogy?)

The main reason the original was fun was because it didn't assume that the audience is stupid, and just want a lot of blood and guts. Williamson knows that today's horror fans are more sophisticated, and expect a movie that makes sense. I enjoyed the movie a lot, and probably will go see it again. In the movie Randy at one point said, sequels suck. With this one, he was wrong. Here's looking to Scream 3.