Scream 2 (1997) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 1

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Two times the chills, two times the fake-outs!

Welcome back to the sixth annual presentation of 31 Days of Horror. Thirty-one consecutive reviews of horror films during the month of October. First up, is Scream 2, Wes Craven’s sequel to his ground-breaking, meta horror film Scream from the previous year.

Before Viewing

The trailer for Scream 2 follows a lot of the same tactics that the original film’s trailer does. But instead of presenting the rules for surviving a scary movie, these are the rules for surviving its sequel. The body count is bigger. Death scenes are more elaborate. And never assume the killer is dead. The majority of the cast returns, along with other new faces, as some copy cat continues the Woodsboro murders.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

At a preview event for the movie Stab, based on the events of the Woodsboro, CA murders (shown in Scream), Windsor College seniors Maureen Evans and Phil Stevens (Jada Pinkett & Omar Epps) are killed by someone in a ghostface costume, apparently emulating the film. The next day at the Ohio college, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is accosted by both the press and crank callers. Luckily, her roommate Hallie (Elise Neal) is there to support her.

Also at Windsor College this semester is Sidney’s friend Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who is enrolled in the film program with their new mutual friend Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), and sorority girl Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar). They discuss the derivative nature of film sequels before being dismissed. Sidney finds Randy to let him know about the new murders, as they are joined by Derek (Jerry O’Connell), Sidney’s new boyfriend. Among the throng of reporters is Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), back to get a scoop, and local reporter Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf).

Dewey (David Arquette) hears about the killings and flies out to help protect Sidney. That evening at the Omega Beta Zeta house, Cici gets a mysterious call and is attacked by Ghostface, eventually getting stabbed and thrown off the second story balcony. Sidney is attacked at a different sorority, but Derek chases off the killer, getting cut on his arm in the process. After this incident, two plainclothes police officers follow Sidney everywhere.

Randy and Dewey discuss the possible suspects, as Randy reviews the rules for sequels, which include: a bigger body count, more elaborate death scenes, and something about how to turn the sequel into a franchise, which he does not get to complete as he is interrupted. Sidney decides to go to the play practice, where she has the lead as Cassandra, a character haunted by premonitions of the future. Sidney begins to doubt Derek’s authenticity and begins to push him away.

Elsewhere, Randy answers a call from Ghostface who manages to separate him from Gale and Dewey, murdering him in Gale’s news van. Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), is also on campus, pleading with Sidney to grant him a co-interview with Barbra Walters. She declines and things get a little heated before Sidney’s protection detail stops him. Dewey and Gale team up to look at some of her footage, hoping to spot a clue, when Ghostface attacks them, apparently killing Dewey.

That evening, the officers take Sidney and Hallie off campus for safe keeping, but the two men are attacked and killed by Ghostface. The killer manages to knock himself unconscious in the car accident that kills the second officer. Sidney and Hallie spend tense moments crawling out of the back seat of the car over an unconscious Ghostface. Unfortunately, the killer regains consciousness and kills Hallie in front of Sidney.

Back at the campus, Derek has been tied up in the auditorium by his frat brothers as a prank. Sydney finds him, but Ghostface appears, revealing himself as Mickey. Mickey teases that Derek is in on the killings, just as her previous boyfriend Billy Loomis had been. That turns out to be a lie as Mickey shoots Derek. His partner Debbie Salt shows up with Gale, revealing herself to actually be Nancy Loomis, Billy’s mother. She wants revenge on Sidney, and shoots Mickey and then Gale.

As Nancy is about to stab Sidney, Cotton arrives and shoots Nancy after Sidney agrees to a television interview with him. Gale stumbles onto the stage, claiming she was only grazed when Mickey leaps up wildly towards them. Gale and Sidney both shoot him dead. Sidney then shoots Nancy in the head, “to be sure.” Outside Gale sees that Dewey is still alive, being carted off to an ambulance. As reporters converge on Sidney, she points them towards Cotton, saying that he’s the one they really want to talk to.

“The entire horror genre was destroyed by sequels.” – Randy

With the success of the original film, Scream 2 was put into rapid development and released in just under one year from its predecessor. Horror sequels were nothing new in 1997 and in fact had been popular continuations of franchises for nearly two decades. Of course, thematic sequels had been around for over half a century with titles like The Wolf Man or Frankenstein spawning multiple related titles. Thematic sequels were less concerned with continuity between the films (either with actors or characters), and more with creating a similar setting and plot, using familiar and popular monsters. The release of The Godfather Part II in 1974 introduced the continuation of characters and plot created in the original, while adding a roman numeral to the already popular and recognizable title. Horror films followed suit. Exorcist II: The Heretic in 1977 and Damien: Omen II in 1978 were the first horror films to follow this convention. Randy’s quote above, however, is most likely referring to the proliferation of numbered horror sequels beginning with 1982s Friday the 13th Part II. These sequels, which were all building blocks for the various horror franchises in the 1980s, led many to see declining quality of the works, in exchange for the amount of films within a series. Friday the 13th, Halloween, Psycho, Jaws, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are only a small handful of films that spawned multiple numbered sequels which diminished the quality and helped to “destroy” the genre, at least for a while, as Randy mentioned.

Scream is a good example of a horror film that was part of the rebirth and reinvigoration of the genre a decade later. It was a film that recontextualized the ideas of the horror genre as a familiar trope to the characters within the film, allowing meta-commentary about the genre to stimulate the audiences in new ways. Scream 2 continued that stylistic choice, having characters comment on the sequel-like nature of the killer’s return. Randy, the audience surrogate and expert on film genres, goes so far as to provide the rules for sequels starting with a bigger body count. Scream 2 increases the body count by approximately 25% over the original, growing to 10 on-screen deaths. His second point is more elaborate death scenes. The majority of the death scenes have greater carnage. The police officer being impaled on the car by the construction rebar, or Mickey’s second death in a hail of gunfire from Sidney and Gale both qualify. His final statement gets cut short. “If you want your sequel to become a franchise, never ever…” What was he trying to say about the franchise building of horror films? Was it that they shouldn’t kill off their killer? Successful franchises always leave an out for their killer to return again in future installments.

Obviously Ghostface is a character that continues into at least four other films. As an antagonist in a horror franchise, he is the most enigmatic killer due to the fact that any character can be the one underneath the mask. Ghostface is not an undead spirit or vengeful supernatural monster that returns film after film to kill without remorse. He is one of the characters in the film that feels the need to extract revenge on Sidney, and those closest to her. In this film, no longer is it her boyfriend, but his vengeful mother and a second killer duped to help her. While the first Scream tortured audiences with guessing who the killer was, only to reveal that there were in fact two killers, Scream 2 attempts to follow a similar path. Suspicion gets raised, overtly in some cases, on nearly every new male character, but at no time is enough information provided to allow the audience to come to any definite conclusion. The 11th hour reveal of Debbie Salt as Billy Loomis’ mother was also a twist right out the original Friday the 13th, where the killer is a character introduced later in the film. Randy even makes mention during his suspect roundup speech, that Mrs. Voorhees made a great killer. A nice easter egg, but not one that is evident as a clue in the first viewing.

The film opens with two African American characters, Phil and Maureen, discussing the use of black people in horror films. As of the release of Scream 2, horror films that centered on non-white characters were few and far between. Often the black characters would be killed off early in the film, just as Phil and Maureen in this film. Joel, Gale’s black cameraman, also understands these tropes, which is why, after the murder of Randy, he leaves the area. He knows he is not safe in this film, and acts the way a responsible person might in a real-life situation. It’s interesting that 25 years after this film was released, these types of tropes are still being discussed. Representation has improved, but there are still films that fallback to these old ideas. The marketing around The Blackening (2022), which includes an all black horror cast, makes light of the situation using the tagline, “we can’t all die first.”

The meta fictional commentary of Scream 2 does not just apply to horror tropes. It makes light of societal problems as well, including murder defenses blaming television and film for the defendant’s murderous streak, as with the relatively recent OJ Simpson murder trial. Perhaps the most famous trial for this media blaming involves John Hinckley’s defense that the film Taxi Driver inspired his mental state, which led to him shooting President Reagan in order to impress Jodie Foster. As film violence became more overt and graphic, various editorials and court cases sought to blame the media for the actions of defendants caught committing similar crimes. Mickey’s goal in the film is to get caught so he can use a similar defense. He mentions getting “Dershowitz or Cochran” to represent him, obviously referring to the high profile lawsuit where OJ Simpson avoided criminal consequences in the deaths of two people. Unfortunately, Mrs. Loomis kills Mickey as her scapegoat in the murders of Sidney’s friends. She gets a bullet in her brain from Sidney as a pointed example of making sure the killer is actually dead. No coming back in Scream 3 for Mrs. Loomis.

As the second entry in what will become a large and successful film franchise, Scream 2 takes the elements that were fun from the first film, and elevates them with more of everything. More killing, more references, more cameos, and more scares. This was also one of the first films to suffer from the advent of the internet, having parts of the script leaked, including the identities of the killer(s). The production made late changes in the schedule to re-write, and protect these secrets from getting out to the very interested public. Not that it would matter 25 years later, but having these leaks around the release of the film could have affected the box office numbers. Secrecy on film sets is now a very common occurrence, which includes sometimes filming fake scenes to throw off any would-be spoilers.

Scream 2 is no better or worse than the original. It contains a lot of the same elements that poke fun of the horror genre, while also utilizing these tropes to scare audiences. The worst part of the film, however, is the death of Jamie Kennedy’s Randy. As the audience surrogate, and the character knowledgeable about all the minutiae of horror genre and tropes, his death definitely puts a hamper on the future of the franchise. Two more films would be released in the original quadrilogy, plus a three season television series on MTV. The 2020s have seen a resurgence in the series with two news films (Scream, a fifth film, and Scream VI) that have reinvigorated popularity in the series and its quirky and prolific characters. As long as horror films continue to be produced, there can always be a place for a Scream film, which straddles the line between homage and parody.

Assorted Musings

• In a list of sequels that surpassed the originals, Randy, Mickey and “film class guy #1” (Joshua Jackson) mentions Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, House II: The Second Story, and The Godfather Part 2. This is humorous for the reason that House II is extremely out of place on this list. It’s uncertain if the character of Film Guy #1 is trying to be sarcastic with this choice or not.
• As Randy is being stalked by Ghostface on the Windsor College campus, he rattles off the names of a number of collegiate horror films from the 80s, which include The House On Sorority Row (1983-and coming later this month), The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982), Splatter University (1984), Graduation Day (1981), and Final Exam (1981).
• Reportedly the original killer (prior to script leaks on the Internet) was Hallie and Mickey. Having the roommate be the killer is an idea that is used in Happy Death Day (2017).