Furthers the series nicely, but.....

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2000)

Warning, may contain some spoilers.
The problem with most horror films now a days is that they are vacuous. There is a notion from a great many aspiring film makers that they can break into the business the same way that perhaps Carpenter and Moustapha Akkad did. Carpenter, as we all know, made the legendary Halloween and Moustapha Akkad financed it for him. That film broke all sorts of barriers and not only was it a good film, but it scared people. In the early 90's, you had an apathetic audience without a modicum of desire to see horror films. The genre had run its course with so many ersatz so called horror films, that no one gave any credit to even the good ones that were released. But that all changed in 1996 when Wes Craven was smart enough to take a brilliant script by Kevin Williamson and turn it into something that all horror fans and movie fans could appreciate. Scream became something of a legend. This was a film that ostracized all of the banal efforts from the last decade and justified the horror film once again. This was a film that respected the greats from the past like Halloween and Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday the 13th. It gave a rebirth to a stale genre and made it fresh. I, for one was thrilled with Scream and even though there are now a slew of inferior horror films launched into mainstream, every once in a while you get films like Blair Witch, Sixth Sense, Stir of Echoes and Final Destination. These films make it easier to stomach all of the Urban Legends and I Know What You Did Last Summers and so on. Scream 2 carries on the story from Scream and it sets us up for the final installment.
Is Scream 2 any good? Your damn right it is. But it is not quite as good as Scream is. But that is okay. Halloween 2 was great but not as good as the first and the only Nightmare that was nearly as good as the first was the last one. So as sequels go, this is a very fine one.

Sydney is now attending college with her pal Randy. She is hoping that all the fuss from her Woodsborough days are over but there is now a film being released that is based on the murders ( and in a great tongue in cheek moment, Tori Spelling plays Sid in the movie Stab ). So there is now media attention once again hurled her way. Then at a local screening of Stab, two of Sid's college cronies are murdered thus lending credibility to theory that it is starting all over again. Soon Gale shows up and then Dewey. Gale shows her face for the media attention and Dewey is there to protect her. So we now have all the major principals in place.

Soon, people begin to die and we now have a full fledged psychopathic killer on the loose again with an ominous sounding voice.
As Randy alludes to almost coyly, too coyly for it not to mean something, Scream 2 doesn't really solve anything. Sure it is revealed that the killer happens to be Billy Loomis' mom and she has her own reasons for wanting Sid dead, but just as in Empire Strikes Back, there is always room for more story. The ending of this film offered a conclusion, but there just seems to be something still lurking beneath the surface. And this is where I have my theories. Bear with me here.
Randy says that Empire wasn't really a true sequel, that it was a planned part of a trilogy and that is obviously true of Scream. Kevin Williamson may have started out with just a really neat idea about a horror film that parodies other horror films, but by the time he reached the second film, he knew there was enough material here to make three films, and in my mind, it will be four. You see, I don't think the killer is really caught. In Scream it was Stu and Billy, in this one it is Mrs. Loomis and in the third one it is, anyway, you get the picture. But at the end of Scream 3, there is that feel to it that tells you that something further could happen. Even at the end of Friday the 13th, the final chapter, Tommy's eyes are all bugged out and the producers were basically telling you that this was not the last installment. And in Scream 2, I think there are real clues as to who the real killer is.
When Randy is killed, we almost all but forget his conversation with Dewey about them both possibly being suspects. Because with him gone, he is obviously not a suspect anymore, but why not Dewey? Especially in this film, he is always around when the killings happen, and as he said about Derek when he was slashed on the wrist, he himself always just happens to get hurt but not fatally. There are also shots of him in this film and in the first one wearing the same type of boots that the killer does. To me, just like in Star Wars, there has to be a fourth one. The script is all but jumping out at us and how many films have just stopped after making 4 films? Scream could make history by doing so. There are just way to many possibilities and none of the doors have been shut on Dewey being the killer.
Anyway, back to the film itself. It does a nice job of furthering the story and Randy and his film class have some nice moments when they discuss movies and their sequels. This film also does a nice job of famous cameos. Joshua Jackson, Rebecca Gayhart, Portia DeRossi and Sara Michelle Gellar have small but fun roles in the film. Actually the cast is well assembled in the film.
Overall, Scream 2 is not quite as good as Scream but that would have been impossible anyway. It is however, a good film and it does plenty to set up Scream 3. This is a good second installment to the famous trilogy.

8 out 10- Looking forward to the 4th one, if they can get the principals to come back....