Popcorn Kernels: Only 90's Kids Will Get It

Welcome back to our regularly scheduled program of mid-length mini-reviews! Today we’re playing catch-up on two B-list entries in quintessential 90’s genres: teen movies and post-Scream horror!

Never Been Kissed

Year: 1999

Director: Raja Gosnell

Cast: Drew Barrymore, David Arquette, Michael Vartan

Run Time: 1 hour 47 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A reporter goes undercover at the local high school for a story, but gets distracted by her attempt to reset her loser reputation and a budding romance with a handsome teacher.

Never Been Kissed is one of those movies that rom-com fans should never ever revisit. Not because it’s terrible, but because in retrospect it’s deeply inappropriate. A lot of rom-coms glorify behaviors like stalking, going after taken men, or rushing into marriages, but this is the only one I’m aware of where the central relationship is between a teacher and someone who he believes to be 17. And the other spoke on that love triangle is between the undercover reporter and somebody who’s actually 17. This movie shouldn’t be allowed within 50 feet of a high schooler’s collection.

If you try to ignore that by focusing on the sparsely dotted line of morality where you know that she secretly is of age, the rest of the movie still isn’t a terrific entry in the genre, but it’s pleasant enough. It’s definitely a hang-out movie, allowing charming stars Drew Barrymore, David Arquette (who I will always love, so sue me), Molly Shannon (in an excellent and rare role as a woman who’s actually on top of things – especially in bed), John C. Reilly, and Octavia Spencer (who is still paying her dues by playing the role she would play in every movie for a decade and change: the coworker who goes “Mmhmm!”) to sit back, relax, and have fun, without getting tripped up by anything as gauche as a plot.

The first act takes up about half the film, and if we didn’t already know the title, we wouldn’t know Barrymore’s character was a kiss virgin until about ten minutes before the closing credits. Although we definitely could have deduced as much, thanks to their preposterously extreme efforts to plausibly nerdify the charming young actress, which include her clomping around with her back hunched like a hungover Igor, wearing what can only be described as knitted maternity clothes, and sporting lips more chapped than Blake Lively’s at the end of The Shallows.

The movie is actually really careless with its best element, that of an adult attempting to rewrite her high school life and learning how much things have changed. It could have been 21 Jump Street, but its utter lack of focus makes the plot a sub-Cinderella Story wash. While the humor is decent (my favorite jokes in the film are a handful of absurdist visual gags that slam into the film completely out of nowhere), the structure is both directionless (the third act monologue – as played by her story in the newspaper – is equally as confused about what it’s supposed to be saying as we are. At any rate, it’s certainly too vague and diary-ish to actually be a good article in a real paper) and deeply stupid (Love Interest is actively upset that she’s not 17, so she makes a grand romantic gesture… forcing him to kiss her in front of a stadium full of people like a goddamn psychopath). Not to mention icky. While charming, Never Been Kissed is a deeply flawed movie that you won’t want to take home to mom.

TL;DR: 6/10

Phantoms

Year: 1998

Director: Joe Chappelle

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rose McGowan, Joanna Going 

Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A small-town doctor and her little sister arrive home and discover that half the townspeople are dead and the rest are missing. They are haunted by strange visions as they team up with the sheriff and his team to try and survive the night.

With a movie that came out two years after Scream that stars Rose McGowan and other teen favorites and boasts one of those lazy group photo posters, you’d think you know exactly what you’re getting. You’d be very wrong, because Phantoms ain’t no dime-a-dozen quippy slasher. This is an adaptation of a Dean Koontz novel, one of his most underrated tomes of the macabre. Of course, being a Dean Koontz movie comes with its own set of rules. Mainly, it sucks.

Stephen King must have sold his soul to some Lovecraftian film gods, because it’s utter hogwash that he’s given us Carrie, The Shining, Misery, and so on, and the best we get from Koontz is Watchers 3.

So yes, despite being adapted from one of my favorite novels, Phantoms is a cinematic compost heap. Setting aside what they changed from the source material (everything) and how that affected the story (poorly), approaching Phantoms as a film taken on its own is still a miserable, pointless endeavor. Trying to find something good to say about it is like trying to decide which fart smells the best. At the end of the day, you’re still smelling farts.

A bizarre attempt to remake The Thing on a Ghost Cat budget, Phantoms is an effects-driven horror film without the effects. It finds so many ways around showing any sort of gore or grotesquerie (including, but not limited to, POV shots and those obnoxious film negative flash cuts that we all the rage in the 90’s) that it’s only when the characters start arbitrarily spouting F-words in the third act that you realize it wasn’t cut for TV.

And it’s not like the people on set can't act (hell, Peter O’Toole is in the bloody thing). It’s just that they’re not acting. A babyfaced Ben Affleck flounders in a tough-guy sheriff role that makes him look like a second grader playing dressup, Rose McGowan’s not asked to do anything other than be an asshole and stand in the corner, and Peter O’Toole is about fifty years past his prime. Their bored underreactions and the film’s careless editing mean that not a single shock gag lands.

When a lineup of cardboard characters is hastily shuffled through a randomly sawn-off handful of plot beats, it’s hard to get a foothold. The film sprints toward the finish line before you can even begin to care about what’s going on, despite the atmospheric eeriness of exactly two sequences.

To make a long, boring story short, Phantoms is an embarrassment to a subgenre that produced films like Valentine and Urban Legends: Bloody Mary. Steer clear of it, not that you’ll need to put much effort into that.

TL;DR: 6/10

Word Count: 1108

The Texts Are Coming From Inside The House

Year: 2011

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox

Run Time: 1 hour 51 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Here we are at the end of yet another of my franchise marathons. However, like so many of these slasher villains have proven, it’s never truly the end. Betweens remakes, reboots crossovers, and recalibrations, all our favorite killers remain indestructible. In fact, Scream itself is experiencing new life as a surprisingly watchable teen soap on MTV. Nevertheless, let’s take a moment to reflect on where some notable franchises have left us, in honor of the Scream tradition of contemplating the rules and formulas of horror films.

Friday the 13th left this world in a blaze of glory with the one-two punch of the insane, alternately blisteringly gory and leadenly dull Jason Goes to Hell and the zippy but senile Jason X. A Nightmare on Elm Street gave us Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, a thoughtful, chilling masterpiece that reflected on the decade of crap that came before it and recycled it back into something great. Halloween (reviews yet to come) tossed Michael Myers to the winds of the new millennium, letting him get torn apart by the twin evils of web television and Busta Rhymes. Texas Chainsaw introduced Leatherface to Illuminati nipples. And Saw forgot they were even making a film halfway through, leaving their main character quite literally on the cutting room floor.

So what are we to take from all of this? Well, mainly that late sequels suck, except where Wes Craven is involved. Now, 2011 Wes Craven was a much different, softer man than 1994 Wes Craven, and that’s the truth. Scream 4 is no New Nightmare and it doesn’t go around changing any games that I can see. But it’s a damn sight better than it has any right to be, especially coming on the heels of the appalling Scream 3.

I mean, just by extent of not having that dumb-ass voice changer box, this film is like Casablanca in comparison to Scream 3.

Scream 4 begins by retracing its roots. Wait, let me back up. Scream 4 begins with a tongue-in-cheek, self-devouring, instantly divisive opening sequence that I am loathe to spoil if you haven’t seen it, though I err on the side of liking it. Then it retraces its roots, for the first time bringing consummate survivor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) back to her hometown of Woodsboro, California. It’s been over a decade since the series of three murder sprees that defined her life, launching the wildly popular Stab series of horror films (the first three of which were based on her life, the rest of which get increasingly inane, all of which I hope somebody makes one day), and sending her to the top of the best-seller list as the author of a book about stepping out of the shadows, denouncing your role as a victim, and becoming a survivor.

Of course, the second she arrives in town a new murder spree begins as the villainous Ghostface (the evergreen Roger Jackson) turns his attentions to Sidney’s young niece (Emma Roberts) and her bland teen friends, of whom the only important one is the inimitable Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), a horror buff who oozes confidence and androgynous apathy. Sidney must once again team up with Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) and his wife Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) to solve these murders and just maybe save their crumbling marriage.

At least fictionally. Sometimes meta scripts can be painful.

Scream 4 is neither the apotheosis of what a modern take on Scream could be, nor is it the black mark on the franchise that some die-hard fans make it out to be. It politely engages with some modern technological advances (Facebook, Twitter, speakerphone, that sort of thing – trés Gossip Girl), mulls a bit over what it means to be a horror film in the Age of Remakes, and waves at new distribution technology and torture porn in the hallway before realizing it doesn’t actually recognize them and pretending it was swatting a fly or something. There are a few ideas that it bats around about as smoothly as a 46-year-old screenwriter and a 71-year-old director can be expected to (ie. about as well as asking them to navigate Tumblr). But otherwise it finds a fairly solid amount of actual material to work with.

It helps to think of it as Scream Lite, for the viewer on the go who wants to watch their brain cell expenditure. Sure it can be a little goofy (like their dogged assertion that naming a deputy “Anthony Perkins” is a subtle in-joke/veritable laugh riot), and maybe it’s a little flabby around the middle and during its extended finale, and yeah it is never ever scary, but it’s also a great deal of fun. Which is more than I can say for the embalmed gags and McDreamy preening of Scream 3. It’s an excuse to drop into the world of these characters one more time, and though it might be fleeting, it’s hard to find fault in that.

And now that the 90’s are over, we’ll never ever have to look at an all-denim ensemble again.

Admittedly, a lot of Scream 4 is coasting, though when it’s on autopilot it’s at least on the level of a Halloween: H20 rather than an I Know What You Did Last Summer, if that’s any comfort. And when the film is shaken awake, there are some moments that genuinely come alive. The film plays with the ubiquity of video cameras in the modern world, utilizing the technology to create multiple angle perspectives on some of the more effective tension sequences.

Now that I’m done making a total nerd of myself, it’s time to… do that a little bit more. Because the continuity editing in Gale’s scenes is just embarrassing, and I would be remiss if I didn’t bring that up at least once.

Anybody agree? No? Just me?

OK, I need to get my act together with some semblance of a conclusion here. Scream 4 has just really distracted me with its baffling uncategorizability. Scream 4 is an ultimately satisfying bumpy ride with veteran franchise actors squaring off against airbrushed MTV personalities, wooden quips rubbing shoulders with chewy subtext about victimization and American celebrity, and a kick-ass mod rock soundtrack by The Sounds not quite clashing with a romantic Western Marco Beltrami score that reminds us just how valuable he is to this series. In short, it’s a hot mess, but a happy one. Like a plate of nachos. Or a Sia music video.

After all I’ve been through, I can’t say I’m disappointed by that.

Body Count: 15

1. Trudy is stabbed in the chest.
2. Sherrie has her throat slit.
3. Rachel is stabbed in the gut.
4. Marnie is killed offscreen.
5. Jenny is stabbed to death.
6. Olivia is stabbed to death.
7. Rebecca is stabbed in the gut.
8. Hoss is stabbed in the back.
9. Perkins is stabbed in the forehead.
10. Mrs. Roberts is stabbed through the back of the neck.
11. Robbie is stabbed to death.
12. Kirby is stabbed in the gut.
13. Trevor is shot in the head.
14. [Charlie is stabbed in the heart.]
15. [Jill is shot in the chest.] 

TL;DR: Scream 4 is a messy, but decent franchise ender (for now).

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1217

Reviews In This Series
Scream (Craven, 1996)
Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)
Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)
Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)

Hellular Telephones

Year: 2000

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Wes Craven is not a horror director. That is to say – like so many before him – he is a director who began his career with a pair or earth-shaking horror flicks and was immediately put in a box, not really allowed to do anything outside the genre. You’ll never catch me complaining about this, because the man has turned out some of the best genre pictures in three consecutive generations. But the fact remains that Craven had other stories to tell.

It was in pursuit of one of those stories – 1999’s Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep,  - that Craven was strong-armed into helming the third entry in the Scream franchise. He agreed to come back in exchange for a green light on his heartwarming violin picture. Needless to say, his music-loving heart wasn’t in it. And neither was Kevin Williamson. 

The screamsmith was far too busy with the seminal, life-changing teen soap Dawson’s Creek to write more than a treatment, and screenplay duties were left to one Ehren Kruger, who must have gotten the gig on the strength of his last name alone, because his CV is a gaping hole that eventually leads to such pivotal masterworks as The Ring Two and three Transformers sequels.

As you may have already guessed, the Scream 3, she is not so good.

I mean, maybe it might have been if Meryl Streep was in it.

Scream 3 instantly starts us off on the wrong foot with its cameo opening deaths: recurring character Cotton Weary (Live Schreiber) and his girlfriend Christine (Kelly Rutherford). Cotton I can understand. We’re capping off a trilogy after all. But Kelly Rutherford? She’s so inadequately famous for this role that Scream 3 is listed second on her IMDb “Known For” page. That’s just embarrassing.

Anyway, these two get murdered using a plot device so New Millennium, it’s all I can take not to vomit all over my keyboard: Apparently Ghostface (the ever reliable Roger Jackson) now has a voice processor machine, via which he can perfectly imitate the voice of any character in the movie. This is technology that doesn’t even exist now, 15 years later, and it s deeply, unequivocally irritating. It would be a better plot point just to say that he’s great at doing impressions and leave it at that. It would still be hideously ludicrous, but at least it doesn’t make me want to smash my Blu-Ray disc against a concrete wall.

Alright, it’s out of my system. Scream 3 depicts the production of Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro, a sequel to the two highly successful horror films based on the life and times of Sidney Prescott (Never Campbell), who had two sets of her friends get murdered in high school and college. Fun stuff. Real life Sidney is now a recluse, living in a remote house in the mountains and working for a women’s crisis counseling hotline. When the cast of Stab 3 begins to die in the order that they are killed in the script, Sidney once again teams up with Woodsboro deputy-turned Hollywood consultant Dewey Riley (David Arquette),  and the acid-tongued reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), as well at the newcomer, the movie-loving, suspiciously macabre Detective Kincaid (McDreamy).

Ah, don’t you miss the 2000’s?

Honestly, this is a great plot on paper. The killer is bringing the movie to life, but constant rewrites (one of the film’s more successful self-reflexive jokes) have left three versions of the script floating around, and nobody knows which copy the killer got a hold of. But just like Scream 2 before it, this great concept slips through its fingers before it even gets a chance to establish a pattern, degrading into a mush of stabbings, cell phone calls, and sinister faxes. We never even see the script we’re supposed to be worried is coming to life.

The difference between Scream 2 and this one is that it still had a solid character arc to fall back on. That film was about Sidney processing her old trauma under the shadow of a new one. This one is about Sidney sitting in a variety of comfy chairs, out of which she occasionally rises for some vigorous avoid-the-knife calisthenics.

There are some stabs (ha) at character expositions, in which Sidney’s mother Maureen (Lynn McKee) is revealed to have a secret past. But these are rendered entirely useless by the script’s dogged insistence on vilifying Maureen as being a slut because she was raped, which relies on such twisted, ugly gender politics that making Megan Fox’s ass a more nuanced character than her actual role in Transofrmers 2 actually seems like a progressive step.

Really, the script is just a drag, replacing the series’ characteristic movie references with a rotting heap of F words in a feckless attempt at being “edgy.”

Scream 3 is about as edgy as a Dungeons and Dragons die.

I do have love in my heart for all the Scream movies. Even this – the left-handed stepchild of the franchise. But sometimes you have to work hard in a loving relationship, and focus on the good, which is what I shall do here. There are a good handful of genuinely funny moments, though they are more broadly comic than the franchise is accustomed to. So at least the sense of humor is intact, though there is only one sequence (a chase scene through a stage recreation of Sidney’s old home) that even approaches the live wire tension of its predecessors. At least two moments achieve that delicate balance mingling horror and comedy, and the cast ain’t half bad.

Actually, that is to say, they’re exactly half bad. The cadre of pretty young thangs shoveled into the film’s bloated midsection (including Jenny McCarthy, Emily Mortimer, Matt Keeslar, and Deon Richmond) is uniformly anemic, though Parker Posey breaks free from the mire once she’s called upon to do some stellar one-on-one time with Courteney Cox. David Arquette, on the other hand, is the exact opposite, straining to connect the dots of his undernourished love-hate relationship with then-new wife Cox., but excelling once again at subtle, self-deprecating comedy. Cox herself is good as ever, though forced to act from behind a set of bangs that seem to have been burned off with acid. Neve Campbell and Patrick Dempsey fail to make much of an impression, spending all their time as they do gnashing their teeth at one another, but Scott Foley finds his time to shine as harried young director Roman Bridger.

Really, it’s not an inspiring set of pros. Especially not when the cons include those bangs. So I leave you with this: Scream 3 is the worst Scream movie. It’s still an alright Scream movie, but it’s the worst. What can I say? I’m in Wes Craven’s court till the day I die, but you can’t win ‘em all.

And sometimes you pick the wrong day to insult your hairstylist's favorite band.

Body Count: 10

1. Christine is stabbed in the back.
2. Cotton is stabbed in the chest.
3. Sarah is stabbed in the back and shoved through a window.
4. Stone is stabbed in the back and beaten with a pan.
5. Tom dies in a gas explosion.
6. Angelina is stabbed in the torso.
7. Tyson is stabbed in the gut.
8. Jennifer is stabbed in the back and shot.
9. John Milton has his throat sit. 
10. [Roman is shot in the head.]

TL;DR: Scream 3 is the weakest of a fairly strong bunch.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1266
Reviews In This Series
Scream (Craven, 1996)
Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)
Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)
Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)

Friends With Benefits

With the mass appeal of Friends, everybody wanted to jump on the bandwagon. A guest appearance next to the most famous sitcom "family" in the world could launch anybody's star into the atmosphere. Over its decade long history, plenty of big stars have come and gone in the purple apartment, but here are some of my favorites.

The Top Ten Friends Guest Stars

#10 Jill Goodacre as Jill Goodacre (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with the Blackout" (S1:E7)

One of the few "big name" stars of the first season, Jill Goodacre got in on the fun before the world even knew how game-changing the show was eventually going to be. A model with very few acting credits to her name, she brought a friendly charisma to her cameo in one of the funniest Chandler storylines of the first season (except for Janice, of course).

#9 Giovanni Ribisi as Frank Buffay, Jr. (Total Episodes: 9)

First Appearance: "The One with the Bullies" (S2:E21)
Last Appearance: "The One Where Ross is Fine" (S10:E2)

Although Giovanni Ribisi has had roles in popular movies as widely varied as Lost in Translation, Avatar, and Ted, he will always be remembered, at least by me, as Phoebe's spacey brother Frank. Ribisi's startlingly odd performance provided an edginess to the show that certainly helped to propel it through its second season into its Golden Age.

#8 Morgan Fairchild as Nora Bing (Total Episodes: 5)

First Appearance: "The One with Mrs. Bing" (S1:E11)
Last Appearance: "The One After I Do" (S8:E1)

Morgan Fairchild is just plain regal is what she is. A television queen in her domain, she brings a smoky sensuality and riveting force to her character, Chandler's romance novel-writing mother. Her innate sexual power provides a hilarious antithesis to her son's gawky fumbling and self doubt.

#7 Alec Baldwin as Parker (Total Episodes: 2)

First Appearance: "The One with the Tea Leaves" (S8:E17)
Last Appearance: "The One in Massapequa" (S8:E18)

People were surprised when Alec Baldwin displayed his comedy prowess by starring in the class A sitcom 30 Rock, but they really shouldn't have been. Not when he proved it so extensively in season eight as Parker, Phoebe's endlessly enthusiastic and bubbly boyfriend. Some guest stars were just that - celebrities showing up on the show to play around. But by his second and final episode Alec Baldwin found himself fitting into the show's sharp comedy style like a glove.

#6 David Arquette as Malcolm (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with the Jam" (S3:E3)

I have a perhaps unhealthy obsession with David Arquette. But don't let the fact that I own a framed picture of him and keep it on my bedside table distract you from his amusing cameo as a stalker who mistakes Phoebe for her twin sister Ursula. Despite his relationship with co-star Courteney Cox, he has a goofy chemistry with Lisa Kudrow that keeps the episode fresh and light, keeping the comedy at the forefront in what could have been an unintentionally dark subplot.

#5 Paul Rudd as Mike Hannigan (Total Episodes: 18)

First Appearance: "The One with the Pediatrician" (S9:E3)
Last Appearance: "The Last One: Part 2" (S10:E20)

Who doesn't love Paul Rudd? Phoebe Buffay certainly does and she married him to prove it! Although he was introduced late in the show, Rudd's character Mike is so endearing that by the end of the show he feels like part of the gang, a Herculean feat considering what a pop culture titan Friends had become by the end of its run.

#4 Brad Pitt as Will Colbert (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with the Rumor" (S8:E9)

Although in retrospect it's a little bleak, the then-married Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston had a lot of fun as he played Will Colbert, an ex-fat high school classmate of Rachel's who hated her guts. Although their contentious split made her a tabloid superstar, it does somewhat diminish the humor although it's still a great inside joke in context.

#3 Jennifer Coolidge as Amanda Buffamonteezi (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One with Ross's Tan" (S10:E3)

Jennifer Coolidge has the Midas touch for comedy, turning everything she's in to gold. Not that Friends needed it, but her one episode stint as Amanda, an egocentric old roommate of Phoebe and Monica's who has developed a hilariously fake British accent. Seeing her dance with wild abandon is worth every cent it takes to buy a TV to watch it on.

#2 Bruce Willis as Paul Stevens (Total Episodes: 3)

First Appearance: "The One Where Ross Meets Elizabeth's Dad" (S6:E21)
Last Appearance: "The One with the Ring" (S6:E23)

Bruce Willis actually appeared on the show for free because he lost a bet to Matthew Perry on the set of The Whole Nine Yards. If that's not the most awesome story you've ever heard, I envy your life. His stint as the manly father of the student Ross is dating is one of his best comedy roles as he reveals his emotionally stunted inner self. Paul's the man!

#1 Danny DeVito as Roy (Total Episodes: 1)

First Appearance: "The One Where the Stripper Cries" (S10:E11)

If there ever was a role Danny DeVito was born for, it's... Well, it's Frank Reynolds in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But his role as Phoebe's bachelor party stripper is a close second. Please, invite him to all my future events.

Word Count: 916

Redial

Year: 1997

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: R

Alright, let's do this thing. I've been sitting on this post since I watched Scream 2 with Sergio and my family in late 2013. Considering that the film is a great sequel to one of my favorite horror movies, it shouldn't have been too hard to knock out of the park, but guess what? I had to look for jobs. And then I got one, which is not any more conducive to blog writing.

But here we are now and I've settled into a routine and found some time to really get down to business. With the beginning of the semester looming on the horizon, I decided I really should clear my slate once and for all and write up the two reviews I have been lagging behind on. So get ready for some extreme review action with power grip!

Sidebar: I would buy a Neve Campbell action figure.

So Scream happened. Upon its release in 1996, horror culture lit up like a lightning rod. Wes Craven was back in the game, as was the by then defunct slasher format, this time with a postmodern twist. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson catapulted to stardom (he would return flailing to Earth with a dull thud a few short years later, but that's a story for another time) and Hollywood was reeling in the profits.

Hot on the heels of their massive success, Dimension Films quickly commissioned a sequel, to be released a mere 51 weeks later. That might seem unimpressive to people who aren't in the film business, but let me tell you that's like demanding a mother to give birth to a fully grown child in three months. The fact that the film turned out as well as it did is largely due to what must have been some impressive contractual wrangling.

Through some unholy pact with the devil, they managed to get Craven and Williamson to sign on again, as well as stars David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and Jamie Kennedy. And composer Marco Beltrami, whose tremendous influence on the films is rarely appreciated.

While there was little to no buzz during the production of the original film (And why would there be? Nobody had any idea of the massive asteroidal impact it would have on pop culture), Scream 2 had the fan mags flying off the shelves like they were in a Ghostbusters movie and eventually the shooting script was leaked onto the Internet (which was barely even a thing at this point, but people were already learning how to use it to explore new frontiers of douchebaggery). 

Frantic rewrites and constant shifts in the killer's identity during production to avoid another leaked ending left the crew staggering. So when people complain about the final reveal of who is behind the Ghostface mask this time around (which I'll talk about more later in a spoiler-marked zone), just let them know that society didn't earn the original ending. We ruined it for ourselves. Like petulant children. So there.

At this point, I'm surprised it didn't turn out to be Fat Albert under there.

Thanks to Drew Berrymore's career-reviving turn as Casey Becker, every hot young thing in town was clambering to be the next opening victim, but the honor this time around was bestowed on a pre-Will Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps as Maureen and Phil, two college students attending the premiere of the movie Stab, which is a parody of Scream, but in this universe is based on "The Woodsboro Murders," the book Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) wrote about her experiences in the previous film.

This meta addition to the franchise is one of many, as Scream 2 more thoroughly explores the concepts of not only characters that are aware that they're in a movie, but are aware that somebody is trying to make a sequel and possibly turn it into a franchise. Just as clever and intelligent as the first, this all makes a lot more sense if you're actually watching it, I promise. 

This element is perhaps even better than in the original Scream (although I do have one small complaint about the "copycat sequel" conceit being dropped in the second half, largely - I suspect - due to last minute rewrites), which had fun playing with genre conventions, but didn't quite utilize them to their full capacity, opting instead for more of a whodunit mystery angle. 

Anyway, Maureen and Phil bite it in a scene that is too similar to the opening of He Knows You're Alone to be unaware of its pedigree but different enough that it manages to be a completely unique (and classic) entity. Although it's somewhat disappointing that Ghostface doesn't use a phone to torment his victims in this scene, his puckish glee at dispatching them in the middle of a theater filled with people dressed in masks (to celebrate the opening of the movie) is a worthy substitute.

Is Will Smith a trade-up or a trade-down from Omar Epps? Discuss.

Moving on to the real people - Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is now a theatre major at Windsor College and she's just trying to move on from her tragedy. She's still friends with Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who happens to go to the same college because of course. Remember this is written by the guy who did Dawson's Creek.

She has a new boyfriend Derek (Jerry O'Connell), a pre-med student who's nice enough but much too bland, and a new best friend/roommate in Hallie (Elise Neal), who is notable for being a black character with a prominent role in the proceedings who survives for a massive chunk of the running time and has actual character traits. Yay! Diversity!

Upon the release of Stab, Sidney has been getting prank phone calls from Ghostface imitators, but she doesn't let it phase her. Things get worse when she learns about the deaths of Maureen and Phil, and she begins to fear the same things might be happening again after the death of a sorority girl named Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar, who is introduced watching Nosferatu on TV and accompanied by a girlish squeal from Yours Truly).

Once the killings start up in earnest, Gale Weathers is back on the scene, sniffing up her scoop like a bloodhound. Also reappearing is Deputy Dewey (David Arquette), who just wants to make sure Sid is OK. But he mostly just scowls at Gale, who gave him a less than manly characterization in her tell-all book. But it's a thin line between love and hate and the two rekindle things as they work together to solve the mystery of the new serial murders.

However, it's also a thin line between mass murderer and boyfriend material so Sidney shuts herself off from the world, suspecting the killer to be somebody she knows. Everybody is a suspect! And the fact that Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), the man she wrongfully accused of murder is back and threatening her in order to get an interview and fifteen minutes of fame does little to comfort her.

The fact that she's learned from her experiences in the previous movie are but one of the many reasons that Scream 2 is a great sequel. Taking characters and situations from the original and either deepening them or turning them on their heads, the film is a perfect sequel - expanding greatly on the original story but also maintaining its own unique presence as a great standalone horror comedy.

And I never ever regret any second of any film where David Arquette is onscreen.

Gale's role in the original Woodsboro killings has made her a prime target for the buzzing reporters as they try to dig into the story. A great reversal from the first film, Gale finds herself shadowed by her own annoying reporter, Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf), a local woman who never fails to get a rise out of her (and elicit some of the best one-liners from a character with a veritable encyclopedia of bitchy putdowns).

While the comedy and the horror are mostly separate from one another (the former apparent largely in the interactions between Randy, Dewey, and Gale and the latter in the stalking scenes with Sidney), both have their moments in the spotlight with several sidesplitting scenes in the second act and two back-to-back sharply choreographed tension-filled scares in the third. 

And although the middle of the film tends toward the draggy side, the film is bookended with a series of scenes of such caliber that it's an easy fault to ignore.

And the middle does include the tremendously trippy and great "Cassandra" sequence, a holdover from Craven's days as an English professor.

Here's where we enter spoilers territory. If you are of a mind to watch this movie on your own, skip to the picture of Portia de Rossi and her terrible eyebrows. (Yes! Lindsay Bluth is in this movie!)

So. The killers. We had to come to that eventually. Originally, they were scripted to be Hallie and Derek, which would have been tremendously interesting, had the dicks on the Internet not ruined everything for the righteous and pure of heart horror fans that would never have leaked any information about a beloved franchise.

Not that I'm mad or anything.

What we do get is an overwhelmingly confusing reveal. The first killer (of course there's two) turns out to be Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), a character so inconsequential that I didn't even include him in my plot rundown. In fact, my sister didn't even remember him and thought he was Derek for about five minutes of the final scene.

And the other killer is... local reporter Debbie Salt. But she's really Billy Loomis's (the killer from the original) mother, see? In disguise! Get it? I... what? The fact that both of the killers are onscreen for about as long as the crew member who accidentally stuck his butt into one shot in Cici's scene was infuriating to many. I mean, what's the point of a mystery if the perpetrators aren't even guessable characters?

So their identities do kind of suck, but! But! The finale is still sharp and witty, making great use of Sidney's relationship with Billy and ending with some truly fantastic onstage action and zippy one-liners. It all explodes in a geyser of camp and blood and hilarity, much like the original film and loses none of Scream's integrity and engaging power.

So even though the killer's might as well have been two oven mitts, the scene they get is one for the Gods and I personally think that's an even tradeoff. After spending so much time with 80's slashers, I'm just glad that 1) I can see everything that's happening and 2) the reveal is comprehensible if you're not a schizophrenic.

Welcome back, spoilers avoiders! Now you can read on, safe in the knowledge that you won't find out that Portia's eyebrows are the killer until you watch the movie.

This review ended up much longer than I anticipated, so I'm gonna wrap up here before the last of you falls asleep at your keyboards. 

The humor is top notch, the meta is even better (the Stab scenes featuring Heather Graham and Tori Spelling are hysterically terrible), and although none of it is quite as scary as the original film and the middle can be a slog, two showstopping scenes (the girls get in a car crash with Ghostface and Gale is chased through a sound studio) and the bombastic finale make it all worth every penny.

Scream 2 is a worthy sequel despite its production woes and maintains the consistent gold standard quality of Wes Craven's 90's postmodern period. Although the legions of terrible Scream imitations were already saturating the market, this film stood above the current to prove that it could still be done well under a skillful guiding hand.

In conclusion, Portia de Rossi has terrible eyebrows.

Killer: Ghostface (voiced by Roger Jackson)

Final Girl: Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell)

Best Kill: Omar Epps is stabbed in the ear through a bathroom stall.

Sign of the Times: BROWN LIPSTICK; CiCi has one of those see-through phones.

Scariest Moment: Sidney and Hallie have to climb over an unconscious Ghostface in the front seat of a cop car.

Weirdest Moment: Ghostface threatens Sidney via instant messaging.

Champion Dialogue: "Everybody thinks sororities are just about blowjobs, but it's not true."

Body Count: 10

1. Phil is stabbed in the temple through a bathroom stall.
2. Maureen is stabbed to death in a crowded movie theater. 
3. Cici is stabbed and thrown off a balcony.
4. [Randy is stabbed to death and has his throat slit.] 
5. Officer Andrews has his throat slashed with a knife.
6. Officer Richards gets his head impaled by a pipe during a car accident.
7. Hallie is stabbed to death.
8. Derek is shot in the chest.
9. [Mickey is shot 16 times in the chest.]
10. [Mrs. Loomis is shot to death.] 

TL;DR: Scream 2 is a rare sequel that continues the story of the original in a unique and exciting way.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 2188

Reviews In This Series

Scream (Craven, 1996)

Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)

Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)

Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)