I’m keeping this spoiler-free in case you’ve never seen Scream 2.

It seems like just yesterday that it was the 25th anniversary of Scream, one of my favourite horror films of all time. The success of that film naturally spawned a sequel that came out one year later and considering Halloween is upon us, it seems like a good time as any to talk about Scream 2. Horror sequels rarely live up to the standards of the original, so how does Scream 2 fair when compared to the beloved original?

If Scream was a meta-commentary on the slasher genre, Scream 2′s meta angle is the concept of sequels itself. The film, once again directed by Wes Craven, openly acknowledges that sequels always tend to be bigger but rarely surpass the original, save for some exceptions like Empire Strikes Back and Godfather Part II. It’s essentially trying to give itself a pass for being lesser than the original, which it is, but despite that fact, Scream 2 is still a really solid offering. It’s not only worth a watch but is one of the rare horror sequels that doesn’t feel like a cash grab (even though it was released a year after the first Scream, strongly implying the film was rushed to capitalize on the success of the first).

Neve Campbell returns as Sidney, who has graduated high school and has gone off to college. There’s a slew of returning characters, such as Dewey, Gale and Randy, but a bunch of new additions like Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) and Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps open up the film in a standalone-ish sequence set in a movie theatre that’s occupied by the worst, I repeat, the worst crowd of cinemagoers of all time. But it’s also brilliant in showing that Hollywood has monetized the events of the previous movie into their own franchise starter called “Stab“, cashing in on the cheap thrills for the masses. The movie is a smash hit too and pays off a passing joke from the first film, where Sidney mentions that if their lives were to ever get the movie treatment, Tori Spelling would likely play her character (which is exactly what happens). The concept of the Stab franchise gets expanded upon really nicely in the opening sequence of Scream 4 as well.

While Sidney is in school, a Ghostface copycat killer begins a new rampage, creating a new “whodunnit” and a whole lot of misery for the cast as they get picked up in brutal fashion. Wisely, the narrative actually wraps up a loose plot line from the first Scream film, the fallout of the murder of Sidney’s mother and the Cotton Weary plotline. Liev Schriber shows up for all of two seconds in the first Scream, but plays an active role in the sequel, which only serves to bridge the two films together narratively in a believable way. Scream 2 in that sense, ends up feeling like a companion to the original film, rather than a needless addition.

A lot of the film’s plot, including the identity of the killers, leaked online during production, but writer Kevin Williamson (who wrote Scream and Scream 4) said that the information that was leaked was actually a dummy script. Regardless, the leak caused Williamson to do extensive rewrites of the script and once you know the leaks and the final outcome, you can see where certain narrative beats were patched up to try and offer audiences a surprise, even though internet leaks were really hard to find on the internet in the 90s; it’s not like social media was a thing, so the average moviegoer would have likely never seen the leaks. To be honest, having read through the leaked story beats, the final version we got seemed like the better cut, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise that the film received extensive rewrites, as the final cut is a much more focused and streamlined story, rather than the messy and convoluted draft that made its way online.

I think it’s a fair statement to say Scream 2 isn’t as good as the original Scream, but for a horror sequel, especially a slasher sequel, it’s way better than it has any right to be and one you should consider watching this Halloween!