I like to watch a lot of horror movies around Halloween, even though the ‘holiday’ is not as big a thing in Australia as it is in America. We’re only really in it because of the commercial appeal of selling decorations and confectionary, with none of the spiritual aspect that permeates the origins of the American and European Halloween. I got the ball rolling (who says you can’t start watching scary movies in September?) with a rewatch of Ridley Scott’s eminently suspenseful Alien on Friday night, and continued with a viewing (my first) of Wes Craven’s slasher sequel Scream 2.
I watched the original 1996 Scream a couple of months ago and loved it. It’s hilarious but it’s not a spoof, and it doesn’t skimp on the scares. It delivers a thrilling and effective slasher film while also commenting on and subverting the tropes of the subgenre, resulting in a truly unique (at least, until everybody started ripping it off) postmodern horror film. Not to mention that it includes one of the best ever horror protagonists in the form of Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, who serves to reinvigorate the final girl trope with a distinctly feminist bent. It’s an awesome movie.
I was a little apprehensive going into its 1997 (now that’s a quick turnaround) sequel. Despite the inclusion of the original director, screenwriter and cast (all of which tends to be a good omen), horror sequels are never as good as the original, as Scream 2‘s characters point out multiple times. And while it does have its flaws (the primary one being that the original’s subtextual meditations on the effect of movie violence become the text in the sequel, to lesser effect) the film does a great job at living up to the high standard that the original set. I could tell that Scream 2 was a worthy successor almost immediately, as it has an excellent opening scene.
The original Scream has an iconic opening sequence, perhaps the most iconic of any horror film. It’s been parodied and imitated but never bettered. Thus, the sequel is faced with an immediate hurdle, because it has to construct an opening that could somehow live up to the first film’s. And, somehow, it did. The opening scene of Scream 2 is not better than the original’s, but it is pretty damn excellent in its own right. It stars Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps, playing a couple who attend an advance screening of the film-within-a-film Stab. Their chemistry with each other instantly endears them to the audience, and the crowded location that they’re situated in gives us a false sense of security in assuming that they might live past the opening scene. The audience relaxes even more as the opening scene directly and comedically references the opening scene of the previous film, as Stab features a crappy, Hollywoodised version of the Drew Barrymore phone conversation. It was a bold choice to directly reference the big shoes that the film has to fill, but I’m glad they went for it. The comedy continues as Epps’ character goes to the bathroom to encounter two guys cosplaying as Ghostface at the urinal — until the calm is shattered when Epps is stabbed in the side of the head through a cubicle wall! It’s a shocking and unceremonious end to the character, and the murder’s gory nature instantly ups the ante of violence from the original. The tension continues to ramp up as the killer, now dressed in Epps’ clothing and still wearing his Ghostface mask, returns to the screening and sits next to Plinkett Smith. She mistakes him for her boyfriend until she notices that his hands are drenched in the real Epps’ blood. On the screen, a bastardised version of Barrymore’s death from the original plays out as Plinkett Smith attempts to escape but is stabbed multiple times by the killer, which goes unnoticed by the cheering, costumed crowd. The killer disappears as Plinkett Smith climbs up in front of the screen, dying as only a couple of the viewers realise that something’s wrong.
It’s a lengthy, frenzied and effective scene that quickly establishes the film’s thesis and makes it clear that the sequel will be every bit as clever and subversive as the original (at least until the climax, where things become a bit predictable). I’m surprised people don’t talk about this opening that often. It’s truly amazing.
Beyond the Popcorn 