Scream 2

The first ‘Scream’ (308434) was a clever genre deconstruction of the do’s and dont’s of the teen slasher film, so it’s not so surprising then that ‘Scream 2’ pays clever homage to sequels. Like all good horror sequels the body count is higher, the murders are more gruesome, but contrary to the belief held by the film literate teens in this film that “sequels suck”, ‘Scream 2’ pleasingly holds its own. It even has it’s own film within a film, “Stab”, the movie version of the events of the first film. This time round, Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell reprising her role) is at college trying to put the Woodsboro murders behind her, that is until a series of campus murders aping the killings of the first film make it clear that someone is planning a sequel of their own. Director Wes Craven, (no slouch to the genre himself having made ‘Nightmare on Elm St’ and ‘The Hills have Eyes’) and writer Kevin Williamson inject fresh ‘blood’ into the formula by presenting a group of characters to care for (not just a bunch of disposable, horny teens), and by not sacrificing the frights for the sake of a cheap laugh, a common malady of contemporary horror. Cast includes David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Heather Graham, Jamie Kennedy, Laurie Metcalf, Jerry O’Connell, Liev Schreiber and Jada Pinkett.