Scream 2 (No Spoilers)

After the success of 1996’s Scream everyone involved with the series set to work on a sequel. Crazy by todays standards – in that I mean how good the sequel turned out – Scream 2 hit screens less than a year after the debut of the box office smashing original. Wes Craven returned to direct from a script from series creator Kevin Williamson and all of the surviving characters and cast from the the first film returned for another dance with slasher Ghostface. Over twenty years on from it’s release and Scream 2 is the slasher sequel to beat. It’s strong points far outweigh it’s bad points but the film, considered a favourite amongst fans of the series, does have some slight issues at times.

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has moved on from the events of the original film that saw her friends brutally dispatched by a knife wielding slasher, of whom she was the main target. Now in college Sid is determined not to let those events shape her life. Easier said than done. It seems a copycat killer is on the loose. Now Sid finds herself the target once more. Those closest to her in mortal danger. Bodies begin to pile up and ANYONE could be the killer.

Scream made an impact by the way it embraced the conventions of the slasher genre and played with audience expectations in relation to them. It’s characters we’re aware of slasher movies and all too aware their lives had turned into one. It was a great idea and hit home with fans. Scream 2 continues in this manner only this time it turns it’s sights on sequels. Scream 2 is a clever film. The problem is it’s arguably a bit too clever for it’s own good. See this sequel spends so much time – for a slasher movie this clocks in at just under two hours – showing us how it knows most sequels suck. Characters discuss the conventions of the sequel and by doing so prove how they can be overcome and still manage to provide a fresh and exciting film that goes against what the viewer expects to happen AND for the most part that’s just what Scream 2 does. Yet in doing so it forgets to be a movie in some ways and comes off more like a dissertation. I’m not syaing that’s bad and hell, look, Williamson had more than earned the right to show off with his genre knowledge with this sequel but it’s just extremley busy.

I love Scream 2. I love how big the film is compared to the first film. It’s got a massive cast and some of the best set pieces out of the entire series. There’s loads of characters in Scream 2 and each one is well drawn out from the leads to the smaller roles. So much so that when one character claims “Everyone’s a suspect” you literally think that ” yeah, no messing, the killer or killers could be anyone in this movie!” The big stand out Scream has had over other slasher movies is the way it follows it’s core characters and not it’s slasher. Ghostface in these films is a tool. The focus, as I hope more slasher writers would come to realise, is it’s fantastic characters. You don’t want these people to die. You root for them. I think that’s why I love the Scream series as much as I do.

Wes Craven, his cast and crew do fantastic work. The film looks brilliant. No one expected the first Scream to be such a smash hit and with this sequel you can see on screen the results of that success. Like I said, this film is bigger, bolder and much more self assured of itself. That’s not to say it’s better. Scream is a classic. Scream 2 is almost as good but not quite. It would have been interesting to see what Williamson and Craven would have come up with if the sequel had not have gone into production as quick as it did. As it is Scream 2 is a extremley strong film, a great sequel and one that turned out shockingly well when you consider the fast turn around from concept to release.