Scream 2 (1997)

*Spoilers for the Scream franchise*

The second installment in the Scream franchise, written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven, Scream 2 is set two years after the first murders, with Sidney (Neve Campbell) and Randy (Jamie Kennedy) now in college, with a new group of friends, but some sort of copy cat begins killing people close to them again. Much like the first film, this one does a great job of satirizing the cliche of films and their sequels.

Scream 2 keeps the tradition of opening with an iconic scene, which creates a newsworthy story. This time around, we see Jada Pinkett Smith, playing Maureen, and Omar Epps, playing Phil, at the cinema about to watch Stab, a movie which was inspired by the Woodsboro killing two years prior, and of course, someone had to die, that’s what makes Scream what it is. Phil uses the rest room where he is eventually killed by the copy cat killer, and they return to the theatre in his place, wearing the mask so that Maureen doesn’t recognise that it is no longer Phil. Maureen is then stabbed by the killer, and when she asks for help, the audience only thinks that it is a publicity stunt, which would have actually been a good idea to promote the movie.

As always, there is a lot of news coverage the next day, and we find out that the two murdered were students at the same college as Sidney, Randy, her friend Hallie (Elise Neal), her new boyfriend Derek (Jerry O’Connell) and his best friend Mickey (Timothy Olyphant). Gale (Courteney Cox) and Dewey (David Arquette) soon show up, with Gale joined by Cotten Weary (Liev Schreiber) in an attempt to confront Sidney as Gale knew all along that Cotton was innocent, which leads to Gale getting punched by Sidney.

The next murder is that of Cici Cooper (Sarah Michelle Geller) when everyone but her in her sorority is out at a party. She, of course, runs up the stairs instead of out the door, which is the reason she ends up dead. If she’d ran out of the door and to the party, I’m sure Ghostface would have disappeared. After learning of Cici’s death, Gale and Dewey come to the conclusion that there is a reason why those getting killed are gettig killed, and it it due to the fact that the new victims have similar names to the original victims, which is a clever easter egg to the previous film.

The death that probably hits the hardest in the entire franchise is that of Randy Meeks. He’s the one character who always knew what was going on, and what was going to happen next. He was the horror movie buff that maybe could have done a better job than the police as he knew who the killer was right away in the first movie, just through watching other horror movies, he knows how they work. Ghostface lures him to Gale’s news van and kills him once he has been left on his own.

The movie ends with revealing that Mickey has been the killer all along, but he is only the brawn of the operation, and he has been doing the dirty work for the brains, Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf). Billy Loomis’ mother. The mother who left him when she found out that Billy’s father and Sidney’s mother were having an affair, which is what lead to the death of Sidney’s mother. They both ultimatly end up dead though, with Mrs Loomis shooting Mickey, not before she managed to get a shot in at Gale, and Cotton Weary appears just in time to save Sidney and shoots Mrs Loomis in the neck. Since Mickey wasn’t shot in the head, a rule Randy brought up in the first movie, he gets back up and attacks Sidney, Gale and Cotton, which leads to them shooting him to death, for real this time. Sidney then shoots Mrs. Loomis in the head to make sure she is dead and suffers the same fate as her son.

While Scream 2 has the best critical reviews, and has been deemed the best in the franchise, and while this may be highly controversial, I have to say that it is my least favourite, even though the third one gets so much flack, but more on that tomorrow. I don’t know why, but I just have never really thought that this was the best of the four. It may be stubbornness, and that I forced myself to like the third one more than this, but either way, I still think this is my least favourite installment, and I don’t really see that changing any time soon.

Much like the first installment, Neve Campbell has done yet another great job at protraying our final girl, and, as bias as it may be, she is one of the best final girls in horror history, behind Jamie Lee Curtis though, no matter how much I love Neve, Jamie Lee is the OG. Jamie Kennedy does a great job of portraying Randy, and it still irks me that Randy met the fate that he did, but I understand why he had to die when he did.

The new cast did a fab job at portraying their characters, even though they didn’t last long, and I loved Timothy Olyphant’s portrayal of Mickey. He, like Matthew Lillard, has something about him that makes for such a good psychopath, and while I never suspected him to be the killer when I first watched it, I was pleasently suprised, even though, upon my numerous rewatches, there are actually subtle clues, from Randy of course, that hint that he could be the killer.

I love the small Tory Spelling cameo which circles back to the first movie, when Sidney says that with her luck, Tori Spelling would be the one who played her in a movie, and what do you know, Tori does end up playing her in Stab, the movie within the Scream franchise, with Luke Wilson playing Skeet Ulrich’s chaacter, Billy Loomis. A nice little easter egg to get you through.

I think that I will be far more opinionated when talking about Scream 3 tomorrow, as I really enjoy it, whereas not many people do, and the fact that there is a lot outside of the film that I could talk about, we’ll just have to wait and see.

This film’s fixation: Timothy Olyphant