Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: [FORWARDED] Scream 2

Recensione di Bryant Frazer (
http://www.panix.com/~bfrazer/flicker/
),
DEEP FOCUS:
The first thing you realize about Scream 2 is that, unlike its
predecessor, it's actually scary. Not just
jolt-your-ass-out-of-your-chair scary (although there's some of that,
too) but under-your-skin scary, like the real horror movies that
Scream exhumed and emulated. The second thing you may realize is that
it's not quite as much fun the second time around. Well, it's a
trade-off. 
Give director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson this much
credit -- more than a movie, Scream created an ironic, self-reflexive
environment. The look of Scream was so sunny, the performances so
amiable, that it resembled nothing so much as a widescreen sitcom
punctuated with murder instead of unctuous gags. I complained at the
time that it was mostly superficial, with an encyclopedic knowledge of
horror movie cliches but no real sense for how to subvert those
cliches and make them new again. In short, the screws never tightened,
I never found myself clutching my armrests, and I left the theater a
little disappointed because of that. 
And on a second viewing, I found that I had underestimated just how
savvy Scream really was. More enjoyable as teen comedy than horror
movie, it still touches a nerve in its depiction of a pair of mad
slashers who cheerfully blame the movies for turning them into the
monsters they are. But the villains are clearly an aberration -- the
whole point of a Scream movie is knowing who the killer is, while the
point of Halloween, f'rinstance, may be that evil is unknowable
(witness Michael Meyers' disappearance into the shadows of suburbia
just before the credits roll). In some ways, the difference between
Halloween and Scream is really the difference between suburban America
in the 70s and in the 90s. While Halloween dripped with as much angst
and uncertainty as The Ice Storm, Scream is almost as agreeable as,
well, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. 
Speaking of which, TV's Buffy herself (Sarah Michelle Gellar) shows up
in a Drew Barrymore-style cameo this time around. (Since I don't watch
much TV, I was counting on the kids in the row behind me to keep me
current on these pop culture references.) Tori Spelling appears,
briefly, as the lead character in the movie Stab, which is in sneak
previews as Scream 2 begins. The whole grisly story of the original
Scream has been turned into a movie-within-this-movie, which is in
sneak previews -- with an audience that's more frightening than the
movie itself -- as our story begins. And, before you can say
"Aauuuuuuuuuuugggggghhhhhh!", there's a copycat killer on the loose
who may be one (or more!) of the cast of characters we met in the
first film. 
The survivors are back. Neve Campbell, with a new haircut, is Sidney
Prescott, who's now a college frosh somewhere in the Midwest. Lovable
geek Randy (Jamie Kennedy), with new whiskers, is a film student who's
seen arguing that movie sequels (wink wink) are never as good as the
original. When the first of the new killings makes the news, they're
joined on campus by Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), whom Sidney had put
away for a crime he didn't commit, tabloid TV reporter Gale Weathers
(Courteney Cox), who's chasing the story and maybe another book deal,
and everyone's favorite former deputy, Dewey Riley (David Arquette),
who's still smarting from his "Barney Fife-ish" treatment in the book
his beloved Gale wrote about the events in the first movie. 
The budget is a little bigger and the script is a little more
ambitious this time around. Craven even gets to stretch out a bit with
a positively Hitchcockian sequence involving a cell phone, a maniacal
stalker, and some vertiginous overhead shots. That scene is a
standout; so is the opening sequence, where the sneak preview of Stab
is filled with hundreds of gleeful copycat killers, all decked out in
ghost-face regalia. As in the first movie, the idea that slasher
movies can teach disturbed people how to slash is explored, but it
seems that the Screams want to suggest that psycho killers are
devious, rather than impressionable -- movies are just one among many
sources of good ideas, and they make a terrific scapegoat. 
As far as performances go, everyone seems to be having a pretty good
time. Kennedy, Cox and Arquette amp up the characters they played in
the first film a notch or two -- it's to mostly good effect, although
I liked Dewey better when he was more soft-spoken. Schreiber's Weary
may have been exonerated, but he's still creepy. New on the scene are
Jerry O'Connell (from Jerry Maguire) as Sidney's boyfriend (naturally,
he's a prime suspect, perhaps even more so after he jumps on a table
and rehashes a scene from Top Gun), Timothy Olyphant as Mickey, an
unpleasant film student, Duane Martin as Joel, Gale's new cameraman,
Laurie Metcalf as an annoying local journalist, and even David Warner
as a drama professor. 
By the time we're taken inside the film school for a clever
cat-and-mouse chase scene, with Cox making suitable prey for the guy
behind the Muench mask, we've been given the unnerving sense that any
of the characters could be the next to go under the knife, as it were.
But even though the screenplay goes out of its way to twist and turn
the plot around and point to everyone on the screen as a possible
culprit, Craven's adroit but bland direction steers well clear of
aything resembling a personal style. I found myself wondering how John
Carpenter would have handled the opening sequence, or how Dario
Argento might have staged the proscenium-framed finale. 
And finally, the whodunit resolution just isn't quite as clever as it
needs to be. (It also draws lazily from a twist at the end of a
certain 80s schlock-horror classic, as though homage were a substitute
for clear thinking.) It's hard to say much more without giving
something away, but Williamson tries to gussy up the ho-hum climax
with misdirection, double crossing, and long-winded explanations that
all serve to dissipate the tension. It's an easy mistake to make when
you think your mission is to surprise your audience at all costs (and
to keep the ending from showing up on the Internet before your film
hits the theaters), and it comes at the end of a movie that would be
fun no matter how it ended. But with Craven and Williamson struggling
to top themselves, the result is an almost-superior sequel that can't
quite match the offhanded charm of its predecessor.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Directed by Wes Craven
Cinematography by Peter Deming
Edited by Patrick Lussier
Starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Jamie Kennedy, and David
Arquette
Theatrical aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (anamorphic)
USA, 1997 

On Tue, 16 Dec 1997 23:57:13 GMT, 
hob...@tin.it
 (Nicola de Angeli)
wrote:
Ehm... Nico... mi faresti un riassuntino in italiano? ^_^
Holden
"I didn't do it" (B.S.)

Ehm... Nico... mi faresti un riassuntino in italiano? ^_^
"Pur essendo un sequel, non e' malaccio!"
Ciao
Nicola
[IT] Lieto di poter essere d'aiuto! ;-)