In honor of the release of Scream 4 this week, I’m declaring it Scream Week here at YNTE. Yesterday I did a YNTE Horror Night for Scream. Today is Scream 2. Wednesday is the 13th, and will be your regularly scheduled, unrelated, YNTE Horror Night. Thursday will be Scream 3. Friday, I’m going to gather up as many YNTE writers as I can to go see Scream 4 in theaters, and hopefully by Saturday we’ll have a big metareview of the film from the lot of us.
But today is all about Scream 2. While the original Scream took a tongue-in-cheek, self referential look at slasher films in general, Scream 2 takes the same sort of look at slasher sequels.
As always, tons of spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!
First off, a correction. In yesterday’s review of Scream, I identified Courteney Cox’s character as Gail Weathers. In fact, her name is GALE Weathers. Her fictional parents probably wanted to have a terrible fictional childhood. They may as well have just named her Squall McRainy.
Anyway, Gale wrote a book about the events of the first film, which has just been adapted into a movie called “Stab”. Phil(Omar Epps) has brought his girlfriend Maureen(Jada Pinkett) to see the movie, much to her disgust.
They watch the movie, which is basically a shot for shot remake of the opening of Scream. It really doesn’t get any more meta than this. Phil gets up to go to the bathroom, but while he’s in there, Ghostface stabs him.
Ghostface then goes and sits down in the theater next to Maureen, who assumes it’s just her boyfriend in costume. It’s a promotional screening, so they handed out costumes and fake knives at the door. Most of the moviegoing patrons are clowning around fake stabbing each other. This covers nicely for Jada Pinkett getting stabbed. Once again, she was a fairly prominent part of the pre-release promotional materials, and once again, dead in 10 minutes. You got “Screamed”!
We then catch up with Sidney, who is doing well. She’s in college now, and has gotten over the trust issues that come with finding out your boyfriend is a psychopath who murdered your mom, and has a new boyfriend, Derek(Jerry O’Connell). Also, she got caller ID!
Randy is in his Movie Theory class, and they discuss the murders and whether the movie is responsible. Sorority bimbo Cici(Sarah Michelle Gellar) argues that it’s completely unrelated, but Micky(Timothy Olyphant) says that the real world violence is a direct result of the film. Then the discussion turns to how all sequels are worse than the original film, even going so far as to say “Stab 2? Who would want to see that?”
In the wake of the murders, Gale Weathers blows into town(See what I did there? CLEVER!). She’s instantly mobbed by local reporters, lead by Debbie Salt, but Gale blows off(CLEVER) the interview. It must be hard for her to have to deal with overzealous interviewers! She then runs into Wondercop Dewey, who came into town to protect Sidney. Apparently Wondercop Dewey is not pleased with how he was portrayed in Gale’s book. Gale trys to get an imprompu meeting between Sid and Cotton Weary, the man she wrongly accused of her mothers’ death, but instead Gale just gets punched in the face. Things aren’t going well for her!
There’s a murderer in town, so you know what that means! PARTY TIME! The local sororities throw a huge party, but Cici gets left behind to be the “Sober Sister”. Ghostface busts in and throws her off the roof. It’s so weird to see Buffy just get killed without much of a fight, I was expecting her to bust out her Slayer moves!
Then Ghostface attacks Sidney, and surprise, surprise, her boyfriend is there too! Even though he saves her life, she gets all suspicious and distant. Nothing can save this relationship except an impromptu musical number. So he gets up on a table and sings Sid a love song in the middle of the school cafeteria. Sure, you make think he’s trying to kill you, but at least he can hit high notes.
Randy lays out his “rules” for a horror sequel:
- The bodycount is always bigger
- The death scenes are always much more elaborate. More blood, more gore. Carnage candy. Your core audience just expects it.
- If you want your sequel to become a franchise, never ever under any circumstances assume the killer is dead.
Then, Randy’s hanging out with Dewey and Gale outside, when they get a call from Ghostface. They split up, looking for anyone with a cell phone within sight of them, but once he’s alone, Randy gets pulled into a van and stabbed a bunch. And this time, unlike last movie where he was shot and lived, he is very, very, dead.
Cotton Weary tries to talk to Sidney in a library, but gets arrested for looking creepy. The cops let him go once he convinces them that’s not an actual crime.
Dewey and Gale decide that the Killer was probably present at each of the crime scenes and decide to watch her footage to try and find him. So they go into the abandoned college campus to do so. They watch a lot of the footage from earlier in the movie, including the footage of them fighting, but now they are best buds again. Maybe they’ll go inexplicably make out in the woods while murders are happening nearby again! That’s TRUE romance.
It turns out the makeout den they chose this time was a bit too close to the murdering. Ghostface shows up and stabs Dewey, but Gale gets away. Gale runs into Cotton, who has Dewey’s blood all over him. Convinced that Cotton is Ghostface, and that he just murdered the man of her dreams (or at least the man of her poorly timed makeouts), so she runs away. Once outside, she again runs into local reporter Debbie Salt, who has been stalking her all movie.
Sid decides that the best place to go is the stage where her creepy play is taking place, which is convenient, because her boyfriend Derek is tied up on stage there. But then, Ghostface shows up, and takes off his mask, revealing himself to be Mickey, creepy film student. Mickey tells Sid that Derek has been helping him all along and is the second killer. Does she have some sort of spooky hoo-haw that attracts psycho creepers?
Derek claims his innocence, but Sid doesn’t trust him and refuses to untie him. Then he gets shot by Mickey. Apparently Derek was completely innocent and Mickey was just fucking with Sid’s head. Whoops? I think Sid’s gonna have some serious therapy ahead of her.
Mickey admits that he WANTS to get caught, so he can go to court and blame his actions on movie violence, thus becoming a celebrity. He also reveals that he does have an accomplice, and right on cue in walks… Gale Weathers? She couldn’t possibly be the accomplice, could she?
Nope! She’s not! You just got “Screamed” again! She’s being marched in at gunpoint by smalltown journalist Debbie Salt, who Sid recognizes as Mrs. Loomis, her ex-boyfriend Billy’s mom. Apparently she holds a grudge agains Sid for killing her son in the first film. Also, I’m not the only one who thinks Mickey’s court case would be stupid, Mrs. Loomis does too, so she shoots him before he gets the chance. That’s called being a team player!
Also Gale gets hit by a stray bullet and falls off the stage. I was gonna say how it looked like she was blown off stage by a gust of wind and make another joke about her name, but couldn’t get the wording right. Oh well!
Sid manages to escape, and finds an axe, but instead of just attacking the psycho with it, she attacks some ropes that are holding up lights and set pieces above the stage. TAKE THAT YOU ROPE JERK. Her “attack the ropes” strategy backfires, as Mrs. Loomis catches her and gets her by the throat with a knife. But before she can finish the job, Cotton Weary stumbles in and grabs a gun.
Sidney begs him to save her, but he doesn’t do it right away. First he takes some time to bargain with her. He only agrees to shoot the crazy lady and save her life if she agrees to do an interview with him on Diane Sawyer. Sid agrees (because the alternative is doubledeath) and Cotton kills Mrs. Loomis.
It’s revealed that despite being shot and stabbed, Gale and Dewey are totally fine. I bet they’ll be back in Scream 3! Come back Thursday to find out!
The moral of the story is this: Don’t make your girlfriend go to a horror movie, or you will be stabbed in a toilet.
Catch up on past installments:
Scream
Red State
April Fool’s Day (1986)
Leprechaun
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Valentine
Jason X
Jason Goes to Hell – The Final Friday
Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan
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