BEFORE: Yeah, I'm going "all in" on this franchise - if not now, then when? If not me, then who? Umm, whom? I don't even know if I can pass this way again, so let's just get it over with. Last year was the year I finally watched the "Twilight" series, and the year before that, it was "The Hunger Games". So really, it's four films where I don't have to worry about linking, I just know it's going to happen - because I checked. And they're talking now about a new "Scream" movie maybe coming out this year, so I may not watch it next year, but I'll watch it eventually, and I need to be ready. These things all tend to come around again, eventually.
As with the "Scooby-Doo" films, I've got a married (at the time, anyway) couple carrying over between films, Courteney Cox and David Arquette both carry over from "Scream".
THE PLOT: Two years after the first series of murders, as Sidney acclimates to college life, someone donning the Ghostface costume begins a new string of killings.
AFTER: Really, isn't this just the SAME thing that the SAME writer did with "I Know What You Did Last Summer", he moved the lead female character up from high school to college, but set the mysterious killer on her trail again? If you have to steal from YOURSELF as a writer, you might be really desperate. OR, they sometimes stay, find what works and stick with it, maybe that's also true. But is this my life now, just watching the same storyline with (some of) the same people, trying to figure out which one is the killer, before it gets revealed? I think I started nodding off last night at the worst possible moment, just before the killer was going to reveal, umm, THEMself (whew, covered it, no spoilers, that was a close one). This killer's pronouns are THEM and THEY, and try not to read too much into that, mmKay? It could be several people working together, or it could just be me trying not to give anything away.
I didn't think that a film could get more self-referential or in-jokey than "Scream", but boy, was I wrong, they really doubled down on all that here. The opening murder takes place in a movie theater that's playing the film "Stab", which is what they call the "Scream" movies in the Scream-movieverse, because I guess having a film called "Scream" within a film called "Scream" would confuse people, and is somewhat stupid. But having a film called "Stab" within a film called "Scream", well that helps people keep everything straight, but it's also a bit stupid. HOWEVER, having Ghostface kill somebody in a theater FULL of people dressed up like Ghostface, all pretending to stab each other with fake, non-sharp knives, that's a little bit of genius. Nobody even notices a REAL stabbing in the middle of all the pretend ones - it's like Ghostface is suddenly "Where's Waldo" or something. "Did you see the killer?" Umm, dude, like which one, there were 30 or 40 of them in the theater.
As you may know, I worked at a movie theater all this past summer, sweeping up all the popcorn, candy and occasionally loose change that found its way to the theater floors. I hated it, but there was a certain zen to sweeping up, I found that it did satisfy my OCD to some extent. Without a doubt, the cleanest audiences were the ones who went to see "In the Heights", make of that what you will, and the messiest theaters were the ones showing kids movies and horror movies. Yeah, it's a gross generalization but every stereotype may have a bit of truth to it somewhere. I never saw anybody dress up to go see a horror movie, like nobody showed up for "Candyman" wearing a hook hand or anything like that. Maybe they did this in the 1990's but now it's not really a thing, not since somebody got shot at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" a few years back.
But "Stab" the movie looks an awful lot like "Scream", just with different actors playing the parts. That TV reporter wrote the book that inspired the movie "Stab", so, umm, why is she still a struggling TV reporter in California's 8th-largest TV market? Why didn't she cash in on that movie-rights thing and quit her job? (Sure, like THAT'S the most unbelievable thing about this movie...). But it turns out that the couple killed at the movie theater go to the same college as Sidney Prescott, the girl whose mother died several years ago, which was the murder that Cotton Weary got framed for, and in the middle of all that craziness seen in the first film, that murderer was cleared and is now a free man.
BUT, there's another killer out there who somehow also thinks that the best way to get revenge on Sidney is to kill other people she knows, because killing her would just be too easy? I know, I know, it doesn't make much sense, but this killer is an "artiste" using the technique of building up suspense. If he were ever to kill Sidney, yeah, he'd have his revenge, but then what? What do you do with your rage after you kill the person you hate, then where's your focus, how do you even get up in the morning and make it through the day, so I get it. You can't just kill your nemesis, you have to HURT your nemesis, you have to kill everybody she cares about, you know, in alphabetical order or by descending height or something, that's not crazy at all, you're just focused, that's all, and you'll get through this, I promise. And then your father will love you again, I just know it.
Wait, what? Where were we? Who said that? What was that noise upstairs? Is somebody in the house? No, thank God, but now the phone is ringing. Oh, damn, it's that voice again, you know the one. You can leave town, go to college, try to get a new set of friends, but eventually that phone's going to ring and start asking you trivia questions about horror movies again, so you'd better be ready. I know I am, I'm brushing up on as many horror films as I can, just in case.
Everybody still standing after the last film is back again, like sweet but inept police officer Dewey Riley, TV newscaster who doesn't know she needs to get paid for her book rights Gale Weathers, and horror-film expert Randy Meeks, who is now a nerdy college student in film school instead of a nerdy student in high school. And Sidney's studying drama, acting in classic Greek tragedies like "Medea", it looks like, thank God there are no triggering elements in those old plays, like knives and such, because that would really be traumatic for her. (Seriously? She's somehow OK with this?)
Those "rules" about horror movies say that the killer may already be somebody that Sidney knows - but who? The innocent guy who went to prison for two years because of her testimony against him? Nah, that would make sense, but it's much too obvious. Is it the TV reporter that Sidney can't help but punch in the face, every time she sees her? Nah, that's too unlikely. It wouldn't be...Dewey, would it? Not sweet, lovable screw-up Dewey! But if not any of those people, then WHO? We need to know, because casting on "Stab 2" probably starts up in, like a few weeks, so if you can just get to the reveal, that would really help us out. Thanks!
It's a bit like predicting "The Masked Singer" (which is totally fixed, by the way, as my wife and I have determined...) when the panel presents four possibilities for the identity of the celebrity under the mask, and one of them is totally spot-on. It's never two judges right, never four judges right, it's hardly ever ZERO judges right, it's almost always ONE judge right. Come on, do you think I'm that naive, that Jenny McCarthy or Nicole Scherzinger suddenly has incredible powers of insight and deduction, when neither can count to TWO without taking off their top? You just know that there's a producer who feeds the right answer to ONE dumb judge on any given week, and then there's that voting process? Where the "audience" in the studio and at home get to determine who unmasks? Yeah, sure, there's no way to fudge the numbers on those electronic voting devices - that's the real voting scandal to me, not the 2016 Presidential election, but all the hijinks going on with the voting on "Masked Singer", somebody really needs to look into this. Totally fixed. But I digress.
Somehow Sidney didn't die again, but hope springs eternal, there's another chance tomorrow in "Scream 3", so here's hoping...
Also starring Neve Campbell, Jamie Kennedy, Liev Schreiber (all three also carrying over from "Scream"), Sarah Michelle Gellar (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Laurie Metcalf (last heard in "Toy Story 4"), Elise Neal (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Jerry O'Connell (last seen in "The New Guy"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood"), Rebecca Gayheart (ditto), Jada Pinkett Smith (last seen in "Angel Has Fallen"), Omar Epps (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Lewis Arquette (last seen in "Ready to Rumble"), Duane Martin, Portia de Rossi, Tori Spelling, Luke Wilson (last seen in "Middle Men"), Heather Graham (last seen in "Horns"), David Warner (last seen in "Mr. North"), Craig Shoemaker, Marisol Nichols, Philip Pavel (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), cameos from Wes Craven (also carrying over from "Scream"), Joshua Jackson (last seen in "Lay the Favorite"), Nancy O'Dell, Adam Shankman (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2'), Kevin Williamson and the voices of Roger L. Jackson (also carrying over from "Scream"), Selma Blair (last seen in "In Good Company")
RATING: 6 out of 10 movie sequels slightly better than their first parts
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