SCREAM 2 (Dimension) Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, Liev Schreiber, Jerry O'Connell, Laurie Metcalf. Screenplay: Kevin Williamson. Producers: Cathy Konrad and Marianne Maddalena. Director: Wes Craven. MPAA Rating: R (violence, profanity) Running Time: 119 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
For what it's worth, I correctly guessed the identity of the killer in SCREAM 2...well, sort of. I suppose I should feel satisfied at my own cleverness, since Dimension and the makers of SCREAM 2 have put so much effort into keeping that piece of information secret. Even more so than in the original SCREAM, writer Kevin Williamson goes to ridiculous extremes to keep the audience guessing whodunnit, so ridiculous that the film becomes too focused on the one thing which should have been least important. As a horror film, it's a solid piece of work; as a satire, it's frequently hilarious. As a mystery, it tries way, way, _way_ too hard.
SCREAM 2 takes place two years after the events of the original, just in time for Hollywood to cash in on the Woodsboro High murders. The non-fiction book by reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) has become a popular horror film called "Stab," which in turn appears to have generated a copycat killer. When two college students turn up dead at the film's premiere, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) once again begins to fear for her life. Other Woodsboro survivors like Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and video-store-clerk-turned-film-student Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) offer support, but bodies continue to turn up at an alarming rate. Who could the killer be? Sidney's boyfriend Derek (Jerry O'Connell)? Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), the man Sidney once wrongly accused of murder? Gale's cameraman Joel (Duane Martin)? Film student Mickey (Timothy Olyphant)? Reporter Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf)? Gale? Dewey? Randy? Jermaine? Marlon? Tito?
If you can keep the suspects straight without a press kit, more power to you. Williamson often seems so concerned with turning every live body in sight into a potential suspect that he lets that question overwhelm everything else. When the characters aren't busy trying to survive the night, they're either sitting around trying to figure out who the killer is or _running_ around trying to figure out who the killer is. It all builds to a revelatory climax drawn out so long past the point of diminishing returns -- loaded with confessions, motives and false finishes -- that you can't even see the point of diminishing returns from there.
I'm being a bit harder on SCREAM 2 than it might deserve, because that one big problem may be the only real problem. Williamson's satirical darts are expertly targeted, not just at horror film cliches or the "inevitable inferiority" of sequels, but at the original film itself. The film-within-a-film "Stab" provides a few wonderful moments, as do the audience reactions to some of the more improbable situations (e.g. "Hang up the phone and Star-69 his a**"). The dialogue is sharp, smart and not at all afraid of naming names (Cox's "Friends" co-stars David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston are among those skewered), a perfect counter-point to Wes Craven's crafty suspense scenes. If you're not ready to crawl out of your skin when Campbell crawls across the unconscious form of her tormentor, it's time for a pulse check.
SCREAM 2 is so entertaining both as a chiller and as a chuckler that the lack of attention to those elements is a frustration. Kevin Williamson is carving out a new genre for himself which certainly seems to be finding an audience -- both SCREAMs and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER take off with the radical notion that umasking the monster is a good idea. There's just something deflating about a tense, comic horror film that turns into a Scooby-Doo episode. Williamson has too much talent as a writer of comedy to keep getting side-tracked by conventions, even if they're conventions he's helping to re-create. Scare us or make us laugh...we know you can do both. Just keep the Mystery Machine parked at the curb.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 second screams: 7.
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