Directed by:
Wes CravenScreenplay:
Kevin WilliamsonCinematography:
Peter DemingComposer:
Marco BeltramiCast:
Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Jerry O'Connell, Jamie Kennedy, Laurie Metcalf, Elise Neal, Timothy Olyphant, Sarah Michelle Gellar (more)Plots(1)
Wes Craven returns to direct this sequel to Scream. A year on from the events of the first film, survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) are now students at the same college. A movie based on the Woodsboro murders, 'Stab', sparks off a series of copycat killings, and soon the nightmare is beginning all over again. While Sidney wonders who she can really trust, Randy teams up with former police deputy Dewey (David Arquette), still recovering from the effects of his stabbing the first time round, to work out the rules of a real-life horror sequel. One thing's for sure: the body count has to be higher. Also back on the scene are reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who has successfully published her own account of the original killings - sacrificing her romance with Dewey in the process - and Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), the man Sidney had wrongfully imprisoned for her mother's murder. (Paramount Home Entertainment)
(more)Reviews (4)
There's not much in terms of fear or atmosphere. The actors aren't worth much, and Neve Campbell can’t light a candle to the queen of the genre Jamie Lee Curtis. Pretty disappointing. Quite a lot, actually.
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To continue where the probably best teenage horror ended and not to disappoint, it's not exactly fun and the fact that Craven and Williamson managed it so well that they even matched the original is almost applaudable. The second Scream will forever be just the second one because of its predecessor, but thanks to divine dialogues, a flood of my beloved actors in supporting roles (Sarah Michelle Gellar or Timothy Olyphant didn't disappoint) and a few really well-thought surprises, it is still a smart, bloody-action entertainment that I don't mind being pleasantly scared by at all.
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One of my favorite movie theater experiences of the 1990s. I wrote a review of the film for my school magazine. Scream 2 has everything that a beginner active viewer will appreciate. A movie within a movie (Scream / Stab), pop culture references slowly in every dialogue, humor, suspense, a very atypical romance, and a caricatured college setting. Tori Spelling wasn't afraid to make a guest appearance, there's an excellent build-up of mutual teasing between the Arquettes (the Friends references continue), and Top Gun and Nosferatu are quoted. It's just too bad that actual film science was never as much fun as when Randy took the class.
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All in all, it's pretty much the same crazy mess as the first one, except that this time the effect is accompanied by a sense of déjà vu and the story, which was only ironically exaggerated in the first part, is now a blatant parody of itself. And it’s precisely because it doesn’t take itself seriously, because of the debate around how pointless second episodes are, and because of the noticeable increase in the number of deaths and stabbings, that the second Scream somehow managed to win me over and keep my attention for the entire 110 minutes. The old faces are once again excellent in their famous roles, and the ageing Craven still manages to pull off thrilling scenes in a very impressive way. The story may be nothing but just a caricature of the first one and a mockery of many horror B-movies, but it’s still very entertaining. 70%
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