Film Review
With
Scream (1996) proving to be a
phenomenal box office hit, director Wes Craven would have been madder than Norman Bates not
to try his hand at a sequel, particularly as he had managed to
reinvigorate the slasher genre at a time when it was beginning to look
decidedly dépassé. He had already spawned
one successful franchise with
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984),
so why shouldn't lightning strike twice? The problem was that
screenwriter Kevin Williamson couldn't be bothered to come up with any
new ideas, and so what we get is a virtual re-tread of the first
Scream film, employing nearly all
the same plot twists and even repeating most of the gags.
Okay, so the copycat killer plot idea justifies a certain amount of
déjà vu familiarity, but when the denouement ends up
feeling like a shot-for-shot duplication of what we had in
Scream, the copy-and-paste
exercise has probably gone a bit too far.
Craven's direction is a sharp and imaginative as ever and, from a
purely technical point of view,
Scream 2 is a slightly better film. However, the film's impact is
greatly diminished by its lack of real surprises since, having seen the
first film, you know
exactly
what is coming next at every turn. (The only real surprise
is when Gale Weathers drops the superbitch journalist act and gets all dewy-eyed over Dewey.)
As sequels go,
Scream 2 is not a bad effort,
well-directed, well-acted and fun. But lacking the element of
surprise it is far too dependent on its tongue-in-cheek humour, and
this starts to run dry by the mid-point. Not content with
parodying the slasher movie, Craven now finds himself in the position
of having to parody his own parody, and ends up confirming his own
thesis that a sequel is really just a shallow exercise in audience
exploitation, the thin edge of the cash cow. Matters would
get increasingly twisted and self-referential as the series progressed, to the
point that
Scream 4 (2011)
more resembles a manically skewed send-up than a serious entry in the slasher genre.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
One year on from the Woodsboro massacre, the two survivors Sydney
Prescott and Randy Meeks have resumed their studies at Windsor College,
Ohio, hoping to put their past behind them. Unfortunately, their
past has other ideas. During a screening of
Stab, a film based on Gale
Weathers' account of the Woodsboro incident, two students are stabbed
to death. A short while later, Sydney is herself attacked by
someone wearing the same mask and gown as the Woodsboro killers, and so
it looks as if a copycat psychopath is at large. As the bodies
pile up, it appears that someone is determined to replay history - but
why? The obvious suspect is Cotton Weary, the man whom Sydney had
put away for the murder of her mother. Is he out for revenge, or
could the culprit be Gale Weathers, looking for a subject for her next
bestsellling book...?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.