Scream 2

Years ago I liked this much less than the first one. Now I like it much more than the first one.

I'm a sucker for a well-constructed story and that qualified. The only real misstep the story made was killing off Randy. Not because I liked the character (I think he's a bit of a creep). But he's the most useful character to help understand what's going on, and what the rules the killer is following. You don't kill off Sherlock Holmes halfway through the mystery. That's all I'm saying.

But everything else about the story really clicked. Even the people doing dumb horror movie things like running upstairs.

I think my favorite part of the movie is Cotton Weary's role. He is not simply the red herring. He's the wildcard, a role missing from the first movie. He's not the killer, but could go either way. I don't think enough fiction has wildcards, and it's nice to see one in a horror movie. It's especially rewarding that once Syd agrees to the Diane Sawyer interview, Cotton lands face up on the side of the heroes. That's really cool.

I was always disappointed back in the day that Laurie Metcalf was the killer. In a movie that nabbed Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jada Pinkett, Jerry O'Connell and a bunch of other hot 90's actors, I felt the final killer deserved to be a bigger name than Jackie from Roseanne. I was wrong, and since I didn't watch horror movies in my youth, I wasn't thinking clearly. First of all, the mother of a serial killer being a serial killer is a classic horror movie trope, which I didn't recognize back then. Making Mrs. Loomis the killer of the sequel is really leaning into the horror movie homage of the premise. The other thing I am stupid for not taking into consideration is that Metcalf's performance is actually frightening. With the Ghostface mask off, she is a far scarier real-life killer than either Skeet Ulrich or Matthew Lillard came across as.

I also have to give Tori Spelling credit for her cameo in the movie as the movie version of Syd. I forgot she did that. Frankly, I thought the slam at her in the first movie was beyond mean and unfair, and she's a good sport if she's willing to feed into the cruelty of that joke at her expense. In the decades since this movie came out, actors have been far more willing to play degrading versions of themselves in comedies and cartoons (see Adam West and James Woods on Family Guy for major examples) but back then, Spelling playing along with that specific joke is far more gracious than most celebs poking fun at themselves ever had to be. The worst ribbing celebrities used to get playing themselves was on The Simpsons, which was always beyond mild and always merely in good fun. Tori Spelling being in on this specific mean joke means she's far more gracious and funnier a person than most celebrities of that era.

I sometimes think this movie only exists for two reasons: For Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson to kill off Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and to have Courtney Cox say onscreen that a nude picture of her was a fake with her head on Jennifer Aniston's body. All other satire and scares were probably secondary to those two specific things.

The scene where Randy and Dewey are sitting in the Cafe puzzling out who the killer could be was SO funny, meta, and well-acted, it was used verbatim as one of the trailers with nothing cut out from it. It's one of the biggest selling points of the movie, as is Randy declaring Showgirls his favorite scary movie because it was absolutely horrifying.

And that's another thing. As far as scary movies and thrillers go, I like the Scream franchise, because it's not entirely scares. There's shipping stuff and fun scenes between the characters that aren't broken up by murder. And if horror movies are as conservative a genre as claimed, and always punishing characters for straying from the status quo, Scream is cool because it allows the character moments of normalcy for contrast. Which is good and important.

Three of the four major black characters died in the movie. Halle's death hit me wrong because it was entirely Syd's fault. Maureen at the beginning was a great character because she's yelling at the screen to hang up and Star 69 his ass. Syd having caller ID in the second scene shows perhaps the idea of Scream might have played better before cell phones and the like were an actual thing. The only black survivor is Joel who lives because he leaves while the danger is present, and is the only character smart enough to do so. It's not cowardly at all. It is not his job to risk his life. It's weird that Gale thinks it is.

While we are speaking of Maureen, I have to confess the murder in the movie theater gives me chills now. Real-life makes many former fun horror movie ideas no fun at all.

Dewey being pulled out alive on the stretcher at the end still makes me laugh, and is totally on-brand for that hapless character. My favorite Dewey moment was him suggesting to Gale his laid-back personality may be an affected performance to keep people off-balance in his role as a cop. I like that observation because it's almost certainly not true, and something Dewey concocted in the hopes of what he'd tell Gale if he ever saw her again. But even if it's not true, it says Dewey is not as hapless and Barney Fife as he comes across simply for coming up with that idea himself. His aw-shucks persona doesn't have to be fake for me to respect the fact that he recognizes that it could be, and that's something many tricky cops actually do.

Man, I really liked this. This was a pretty great movie. ****.