Scream 2 Review: A Bigger and Bloodier Sequel

Scream 2 may not be as iconic as the original horror classic, but it’s an impactful  sequel that lays just as much groundwork for the series.

Directed by Wes Craven, who also helmed the first movie (and the third and fourth), Scream 2 takes place two years after the original film. It features the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, now a college student attempting to move on from her former boyfriend’s Woodsboro murder spree as the now-infamous Ghostface killer. But when her university is attacked by a new Ghostface copycat killer – or killers – she again relies on Deputy Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette), news reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and fellow survivor Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) to stop the violence. All while this horror sequel lampoons and riffs on other horror sequels.

As iconic as the original film’s beginning is, Scream 2’s intro tops it with what could pass as its own A-grade short film. College students Maureen and Phil (Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps) attend a screening of Stab, a film adaptation of the first film’s events, right down to a recreation of the famous Drew Barrymore scene. In a theater filled with rowdy Ghostface fans, however, a real killer lurks, murdering Phil in the bathroom and then stabbing Maureen to death in front of the crowd, with none of them noticing until it’s too late.

This whole intro perfectly encapsulates what the entire movie is about. It presents a very exaggerated version of the first Scream – adding a pointless shower scene and obnoxious lightning effects – to show you how ridiculous it could have been compared to what an actual good horror movie does. It shows how even someone seemingly above horror can get invested in it, like the initially dismissive Maureen quickly does, while satirizing how excessive that love can get when it’s taken too far. And most of all, it has real, gruesome atrocities play out right in front of people who are too distracted by their shallow spectacle to see it. 

Scream 2 accomplishes all of that while immediately showing the upped scale that would continue throughout the movie. The shot of Maureen dying in front of a giant theater screen is as epic as it is chilling, and it’s my favorite image in the entire series. The story takes place on a college campus instead of a high school, allowing the kills to be bigger and more elaborate as horror sequel kills usually are. The climactic showdown even takes place on a theater stage, which is very appropriate given how much of Sidney’s life has been turned into a “show” for everyone to see.

Wes Craven even treats us with a stage performance in which Sidney plays the classic, all-knowing Greek character Cassandra. This is a fun, showy sequence in its own right, but as Sidney – who, like Cassandra, is burdened with foresight that no one heeds – is overwhelmed by her PTSD, the sequence becomes a stressful reflection of the pain, fear, and scrutiny she’s been enduring for years… again, on a stage where people can watch it all.

Scream 2 could have very easily been a lazy repeat of the first movie’s story. But while there are certainly repeated tropes and clichés, the film also expands on the original’s look at how tragedy is exploited and sensationalized. The Woodsboro murders were graphic and devastating for so many people, most of all Sidney. Yet most of the fuss in this movie is around either the entertainment factor or people’s desire to latch on and get some fame for themselves, which only amplifies Sidney’s trauma and frustrations. She has a seemingly nice new boyfriend in Derek Feldman (Jerry O’Connell), but she can’t bring herself to trust him, for completely valid reasons whether or not she’s right.

And yet, without giving away who the killers are, their motivations wind up having almost nothing to do with any of that mess. One of them is actually using it as a cover-up to do things they would have kept doing anyway, and the other is one of the main roots of Sidney’s entire nightmare that’s left to fester in hatred while everyone else points and laughs. My only gripe is the relative lack of setup for them. One killer has a very loaded reason for going after Sidney, but there’s very little time to dive into that reason because it’s saved for a third-act reveal… though I don’t know how you’d explore it sooner without making it painfully obvious who the culprit is.

The character whose stock rises the most in Scream 2 is Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), the man Sidney falsely accused of killing her mother in the original Scream. He’s a footnote in that movie, but he emerges here as one of the series’ most interesting characters. He wants retribution for being wrongly sent to prison for a year, which makes him sympathetic, but he clearly also wants to milk the situation and pesters Sidney in overly confrontational ways. Another improved character is Gale. Her motivation to uncover this new mystery shifts from wanting a new story to just wanting to take the killer down, giving her more of a concrete arc compared to her role in the first movie.

I’d also be remiss to not further mention the biggest contribution Scream 2 makes to the series: the Stab movies. These play just as crucial a role in every Scream sequel as anything introduced in the original, because everything that happens to our characters winds up in the next Stab movie, which in turn often influences how the next wave of killers operates, which then leads to another Stab movie in this universe… It’s a perpetual cycle that gives the Scream series so many opportunities for new stories. This one simple inclusion is one of the biggest reasons the franchise has been able to keep going without running out of steam, and Scream 2 deserves a ton of credit for that alone.

Like every Scream movie, this sequel does a great job at balancing grisly violence and suspense with playful, tongue-in-cheek meta humor. For my money, the tensest sequence in Scream 2 has to be when Sidney is trapped in a cop car with an unconscious Ghostface, forced to slip her way over him to the one free door, while fighting the temptation to unmask him then and there. It’s a perfect mix of tense, darkly humorous, and even a touch dramatic. Speaking of the bloodshed, it’s also very interesting that Scream 2 comments on the argument of whether violence in media causes violence in real life, considering Scream 3 toned down its violence in response to that very same debate after a real-life tragedy.

In general, everything that was great about the original Scream is still upheld here… and so is everything you’ve already seen. As well as Scream 2 functions as the franchise’s first sequel, it’s still hard to call it as good or impactful as the 1996 classic. Scream was already a somewhat derivative movie by its satirical nature, so when a sequel repeats many of its same tricks – characters accusing each other, Ghostface taunting people over the phone, people making dumb choices, a crazed villain speech in the climax, etc. – the decreased freshness is even more noticeable than in most sequels. I’m not always a proponent of the argument that “It’s been done before” = “It’s less good” when it comes to sequels, but every Scream sequel is guilty of that to some degree.

But if there’s one thing Wes Craven knew how to do with these movies, it was mixing in that repetition with a healthy amount of new, expansive elements that keep the juice worth the squeeze with even the weakest installments. That wouldn’t have happened had Scream 2 not been as solid a creative hit as it was by laying a lot of groundwork for every movie to follow. It ups the spectacle, fleshes out the characters even more, keeps the playfully mean bite intact, and provides new avenues for Scream to become one of the most consistent franchises in horror. It may not be nearly as iconic or ironclad as the first film, but within this series, it’s just as impactful.

Scream 2 is now available to watch on digital and on demand.

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