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Good quality, reasonable price & entertaining.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Fully aware of its status as the sequel to the surprise hit thriller of 1996, this lively follow-up trades freshness for familiarity, playing on our affection for returning characters while obeying--and then subverting--the "rules" of sequels. Once again, movie references are cleverly employed to draw us into the story, which takes place two years after the events of Scream, at a small Ohio college, where the Scream survivors reunite when another series of mysterious killings begins. Capitalising on the guesswork involving a host of potential suspects, director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson have crafted a thriller that's more of a Scream clone than a genuinely inventive new story. But the shocks are just as effective, and escalating tension leads to a tautly staged climax that's simultaneously logical and giddily over the top. Background information for trivia buffs: to preserve the secrecy of plot twists, copies of the screenplay were heavily guarded during production and restricted to only the most crucial personnel. When an early draft was circulated on the Internet, screenwriter Kevin Williamson did rewrites, and subsequent drafts were printed with red ink on brown paper, eliminating the threat of photocopying. None of the cast members knew who the killer was until the final scenes were filmed.Read full review
This review contains plot spoilers for the original Scream, but Scream 2 assumes you've seen that already. This sequel takes place two years later. At a sneak preview of Stab, the film based on the book about the earlier events written by Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), a masked killer murders students Maureen (Jada Pinkett) and Phil (Omar Epps). Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is now in college and has a boyfriend called Derek (Jerry O'Connell). Already having to face media attention due to the release of Stab, she fears that a copycat killer is after her. Directed again by Wes Craven and written a second time by Kevin Williamson, Scream 2 takes even further the self-referentiality of is predecessor. There's the film (Stab) within the film (Scream 2) based on this film's prequel (we see extracts with Tori Spelling as Sidney and a bewigged Heather Graham as Casey, played by Drew Barrymore in Scream). As film student Randy (Jamie Kennedy) explains, a sequel has to be bigger and more elaborate than its progenitor. Scream 2 is about half an hour longer than the movies it references but it's slick, clever and well paced. Even so, it falls into a number of set pieces. The eleven-minute opening sequence is a good example, and credit is due to Jada Pinkett for bringing genuine pain and loss to what could have simply become ingrowing cleverness. It's a well-executed suspense sequence that deliberately comments on the lack of black faces in horror films – presumably the reason why Sidney has a black roommate, Hallie (Elise Neal). The second stalk-and-slash sequence, featuring Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar) alone in a sorority house is rather more standard. Neve Campbell is stuck with a role that's mostly reactive until the finale, where she displays previously hidden talents for kickboxing. The DVD Like the Region 2 Scream disk, the film is in the correct ratio of 2.35:1. The transfer is non-anamorphic, though it's sharp and colourful with a minimum of artefacts. The soundtrack is much more effective, with the surrounds used in key sequences to keep the audience on edge. A short extract from Sidney's college theatre production will give your speakers a workout. There are twenty-one chapter stops, which isn't really enough: chapter 2 (the opening sequence), for example, lasts more than ten minutes. The menu is no more than functional. The chapters are illustrated by stills on-screen, listed by title inside the box, and in both cases give away key plot elements. There are no extras, which is less of a disparity with the present Region 1 version, which only includes the trailer. It's an entertaining film, especially for horror fans who will get all the references, but as before, a bare-bones disk isn't really worth the asking price.Read full review
An immense thriller by Wes Craven which tops the earlier debut of Scream. Scream 2 begins with a bloody and twisted trip to the movies. After the death of two college students, Sydney Prescott is forced to re live her past and deal with finding a new and deadly killer. Scream 2's story line deals with new twists and turns and a brand new, yet shocking similar killer.
To repeat the phenomenal success of their collaboration on 1996's hit thriller Scream, horror maven Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson did a fair amount of recycling (same movie, slightly different situations), but this sequel comes surprisingly close to matching its popular predecessor. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, and Liev Schreiber reprise their roles from Scream, and this time they're caught in a new cycle of murders near a college campus, just as the slasher movie Stab (based on the events from Scream) is about to make its local premiere. That's the setup for another frantic guessing game involving a number of possible suspects, and the mystery is fatally complicated by the reappearance of the eerily masked killer from the first film. Who's under the mask? Craven and Williamson set up a roller-coaster series of wild plot twists and deadly encounters, and the snappy dialogue once again caters to those in the know about fright flicks, sequels, and all the movie rules that do (and sometimes don't) apply to the escalating body count. Featuring several scenes that will have you biting your nails and gripping your seat, this movie's an exception to the rule--a sequel that beats the odds to satisfy its target audience. Everyone else--you've been warnedRead full review
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