- Title: Scream 2
- IMDb: link
Hitting theaters less than a year after the original, Scream 2 has all the marks of a sequel including bigger, gorier, and more over-the-top kills all while shoehorning in even more notable faces and cameos as the franchise follows Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) to college where the release of the movie Stab (loosely based on the events of the first film) lead to a new Ghostface (Roger Jackson) hunting Sidney, Randy (Jamie Kennedy), Dewey (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) along with new faces such a sorority girl Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sid’s roommate Hallie (Elise Neal) and new beau Derek (Jerry O’Connell).
The other major characters we get the second time around are Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) chasing fame after being released from prison who stick around long enough to be on-hand to play into the events of the film’s climax and Laurie Metcalf as a local newswoman who pesters Gale for much of the movie (giving the reporter a bit of her own medicine) before also playing a major role in the final act where, like the original, the film struggles in making all the craziness make sense.
The memorable deaths start early at the Stab screening where both Maureen (Jada Pinkett Smith) and her boyfriend Phil (Omar Epps) are killed under the nose of the crazed fanbase. The Stab footage, which would be reshown in Scream 4, covers the opening sequence of the original Scream with Heather Graham standing in for Drew Barrymore. Filling out the cast a few more familiar faces including Rebecca Gayheart, Timothy Olyphant, Portia de Rossi, Tori Spelling, Joshua Jackson, and Luke Wilson as various students at the college or actors in the Stab film.
As a horror sequel, Scream 2 has fun revisiting the concepts of the original, throwing in a bit of college life, and allowing Jamie Kennedy’s character to spout of new rules for the core cast to follow where horror sequels are concerned. Killed in the movie, his character will still make an appearance in the third film to discuss trilogies through the magic of videotape.
Not as strong as the first film, Scream 2 was plagued by script leaks and a rushed production time. Despite those challenges, the film still made it into theaters for the holidays earning similar numbers to the original while enjoying (and parodying) various elements of the slasher genre. With Randy’s death the core cast was reduced by one and none of the new characters from the film survive long enough to have much of an impact on the franchise.
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