SCREAM 2 (49)

Directed by: Wes Craven

Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, Jerry O'Connell

The Pitch: More serial-killer hi-jinks, this time in college.

Theo Sez: SCREAM was no masterpiece, but it did manage to work on (at least) two different levels, both as "scary movie" and as spoof of same : the characters hadn't yet proved themselves, so the possibility was left open that we might laugh at rather than with them - Arquette's straight-arrow cop and, especially, Kennedy's hyperactive film-nerd were sympathetic but faintly ridiculous figures, and the fact that we could just be amused instead of (or as well as) identifying made the film's knowing detachment that much easier to take. That's all changed in this slick, rather empty sequel - it's got the confident swagger of a new instalment in a massively successful franchise, and the characters are unequivocally Our Heroes (even the film-nerd is a cool dude rather than a misfit, and he even gets a roomful of other film-nerds to exchange minutiae with). The result is a fairly straight killer-on-the-loose thriller, self-referential for no particular reason (since the genre isn't really being parodied or deconstructed) and tarted up with nods to pop-culture in general and slasher pics in particular, occasional apologias for the horror movie ("It's good to be scared, it's primal"), and the clued-in snappiness of an "Entertainment Weekly" article ; none of which can really disguise its basic smugness, or that it moves too fast and builds to an overbaked climax. Pedestrian stuff - with one glorious exception : the pre-credits sequence isn't just a reference to HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE, but also a brilliant, disturbing, demonic pandemonium out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, and among the year's most memorable scenes (why everyone seems to prefer the so-called "car scene" is beyond me). Otherwise, like the man said, "Sequels suck!"