Like all sequels, this one is a transparent attempt to cash in onthe original - but, of course, it knows it is, and contains its ownlearned discussion of sequels. The verdict is that only a fewsequels have been as good as the originals; the characters especiallylike "Aliens" and "The Godfather, Part II." As for "Scream 2," it's. . . well, it's about as good as the original.Both movies use a Boo Machine, a plot device for making theaudience jump and scream and clutch each other's forearms. Thescares this time come from a mad slasher in a curiously unsettlingHalloween ghost mask, who stalks a bunch of college freshmen whosurvived the original slashings. The killer is also interested insuch groupies as a TV newsman and a crippled former deputy sheriff.I have witnessed a lot of slashers jump out of a lot of shadows.When Alan Arkin pounced on Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark," thatpretty much defined, for me, how scary such an event could be. I wasnot frightened by the Boo Moments in "Scream 2," and I found theviolence kind of inappropriate; this movie is gorier than theoriginal, and that distracts from the witty screenplay by KevinWilliamson.His premise this time is that violence is quickly translatedinto marketable form by the media; since he is doing that very thingin "Scream 2," there are ironies within ironies here. The movie isso articulate about what it's doing, indeed, that you can't criticizeit on those grounds - it gets there first.The film opens with a showing of "Stab," a movie based on thekilling in the first film, and at the screening two audience members(Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps) are . . . well, see for yourself. Soonthe slasher has moved to a nearby campus, where survivors includingSidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) are students, and the wounded DeputyRiley (David Arquette) has found a job as a security guard. Alsohanging around is TV newswoman Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), whocovered the first murders and wrote a best-seller about them thatbecame "Stab" and has now inspired the new murders. Also mopingabout is Cotton (Liev Schreiber), accused by Gale in the first filmbut found innocent, and now demanding a second helping of his 15minutes of fame.Who gets killed, and why, and how, I will not reveal, except toregister a useless complaint that there is no way to guess who'sdoing the killing, and everyone who seems suspicious is (almost) sureto be innocent. Idea: In "Scream 3," the man behind the mask is amovie critic, trying to discredit horror movies so he won't have tosit through any more.The Williamson screenplay uses the horror platform as alaunching pad for a lot of zingers; I'd like to see his work in amore mainstream film. When the TV newswoman is asked about her nudephotos on the Internet, she replies, "It was just my head. It wasJennifer Aniston's body." And a killer says he wants to be caught,because he's already mapped out his strategy: "The movies made me doit," he'll argue, and he plans to have Bob Dole testify for thedefense. ("I'll get Dershowitz! Cochran! The Christian Coalitionwill pay for my defense!")Wes Craven was born to direct this material. One of the mostsuccessful of horror filmmakers, he made "The Hills Have Eyes" andthe "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, and was already headed in thesame direction as the Williamson screenplay when he wrote anddirected "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" in 1994. That was a movie(better than either "Scream" picture, I think) in which the cast andcrew of a horror film found deadly parallels between the plot andtheir lives.Do movies cause people to act violently? "Scream 2" seems tothink so - or is that an ironic stance, to make the movie scarier?Will a movie like this, by educating its audience to the conventionsand silly cliches of horror films, defuse the violence and make themless likely to be influenced? Now there's an intriguing notion.
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