reVIEW (51) SCREAM 2

reVIEW (51)

SCREAM 2

... and with a brand new Scream just around the corner, here’s the other zombie I wanted to resurrect…

Go, zombie, go!

Shamble across the Interwebz!

“Let’s face it, Sidney. These days, you gotta have a sequel!”

-- Stu (from Scream)

The menacing drone of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand” plays over the opening credits of a film called Stab.

Yes, Stab--the film based on the novel The Hillsboro Murders, written by the Antichrist of tabloid TV, Gale Weathers.

With an audience of howling gorehounds in white masks and black cloaks, the sneak preview of Stab (presented in “Stab-O-Vision,” naturally) serves as the opening sequence of Scream 2, an opening that is both a sobering indictment of how fanatical some gorehounds can get about their horror movies, and a brilliant follow-up to Scream’s taut opening; we even get to see Heather Graham (a long way from Twin Peaks, she is) do Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker, in a great Psycho homage.

Slamming us with a coda that is a chilling example of what Scream 2’s “freaky Tarantino film student,” Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), terms “life imitating art imitating life,” the sequence drags us bodily into the second chapter in Kevin Williamson’s envisioned trilogy, a stunning continuation of the first film, many of its plot elements and surprises logical ramifications of events that occurred in the original.

“It’s starting again, Randy.”

-- Sidney

Two years after the bloodbath at Stu’s house in Scream’s climax, Sidney (Neve Campbell, back for a second round) and fellow Woodsboro massacre survivor Randy (Jamie Kennedy) have gone on to university, where they are pursuing a “pseudo-quasi-happy existence,” trying to put the past behind them. A past that refuses to go away, as not only has Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) written a book about Woodsboro, but a film has been made from that novel.

Then there’s Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), falsely accused by Sidney for the murder of her mother (as seen in Scream), still trying to clear his reputation by getting on the tube to tell his story.

With Stab’s opening just around the corner, all these media prods set the stage for the renewed mayhem; as an Omega Beta Zeta sister puts it so succinctly, “It’s that movie, Stab. It’s bringing out the crazies.”

“If there is some freaked-out psycho trying to follow in Billy Loomis’ footsteps, you probably already know him. Or her. Or them. They’re probably already in your life. They get off on that.”

-- Dewey

The sly intelligence and self-referential wit evidenced in Scream is still here in the sequel, proving that Williamson’s skill at writing a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat horror film that is also a statement on the genre and the medium, was not a one-off fluke.

From the broad thematic (and cinematographic) nods to Psycho (and, to a certain extent, Psycho II) to the particular--and peculiar--workings of the Scream universe (what could just have very well been a throw-away line from the first film crystallizes into “reality” as we see Tori Spelling essay Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in Stab; it’s just too bad we don’t get to see David Schwimmer’s Dewey), Williamson displays firm control of plot and character, taking the survivors from the original and bringing them two years forward, each of them displaying scars--both physical and psychological--from the events in Woodsboro.

And given the strong sense of continuity between the first two chapters of the Scream trilogy, my mentioning Psycho may be very appropriate, since, the way I see it, after all the trauma the survivors of Scream 2 go through, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Scream 3 opens with said survivors running a motel just off the highway, dressing up in masks and cloaks and murdering unsuspecting secretaries on the lam.

“So it’s our job to observe the rules of the sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate. More blood. More gore. Carnage candy. Your core audience just expects it.”

-- Randy

Though the death scenes here are not necessarily any gorier than those in the original, what are certainly more elaborate this time around are the set pieces leading up to those deaths; the chases, the thrills, the suspense. In an astoundingly nerve-wracking sequence, Williamson actually outdoes the “potential slasher victim trapped in the back of a cop car” scenario in I Know What You Did Last Summer with the one in Scream 2.

Williamson and director Wes Craven also utilize the Windsor College setting to its utmost, wringing all they can out of the “college campus as stalking ground” milieu.

Just as Scream played with the slasher setting archetype of the small town terrorized by the mad killer (as established in Halloween and done to death in many a subsequent film, such as The Prowler and My Bloody Valentine), Scream 2 trods the well-worn footpaths of such slasher fare as Graduation Day and Final Exam.

True to form though, Williamson takes it that one, smart step further. The script is so cognizant of its setting that the environment is exploited for all its thrill-worthy potential.

At one point, Kennedy, David Arquette, and Cox share a particularly intense scene set on the sprawling campus lawn in broad daylight, and in another (in what I like to think of as the film’s T.S. Eliot “Who is the third” moment), Campbell does a great turn in a slightly surreal dress rehearsal where Sidney plays the doomed prophetess Cassandra amidst a masked Greek chorus.

Even Sidney’s identification with Cassandra--who is doomed to live out a future she is intimately familiar with, because she can convince no one of its impending reality--is a stroke of genius on Williamson’s part. At one point in the film, Sidney laments, “I knew this was going to happen”; the police stations and reporters are now a painfully familiar sight for poor Ms. Prescott.

“Wow. That was intense.”

-- Cotton

Crackling with an air of tense expectancy and boasting a climax that has some last-minute mind screws and plot curveballs, Scream 2 is an expertly executed film that highlights not only the fascination of the movie-going masses with violence, but also the omnipresence of the media in our lives.

It is a film that once again proves that, 1) Wes Craven is alive and well and still quite capable of eliciting the scares, 2) it doesn’t hurt for horror to have a brain, and 3) Kevin Williamson is a brilliant writer with a deep respect for the genre and a great sense of humour.

Described by one critic as “a fascinating piece of work for a post-media society,” Scream 2 is a film that holds a mirror up to itself, the horror genre, and the audience, all in one graceful, knowing gesture (the audience being a microcosm of society at large); a film that gives you pause for reflection, as you’re running scared silly for your life.

“You do realize that if we were in a Scream movie, you'd be the prime suspect...”

-- Mark Gatela to me

[The above review existed in a former published life, and in slightly altered form, in the year 1997, under the identity of “Scream and Scream Again.”]

(Scream 2 OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

SANTA CLARITA DIET
(January 2017)

"... On the other hand, maybe nothin’s impossible. Who would have ever thought an octopus and a kitten could fall in love?
"It’s on YouTube. You gotta see it. It’ll give you hope.”

There’s a select group of actors who, because of a Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show) that they helped shepherd into reality, have got a lifetime Pass from me; they can choose to come out in whatever kind of film or series they want, and I will have no right to look at them askance or criticize them, because I’m eternally grateful for that Single Fantabulous Film (or TV Show).

Nicolas Cage immediately comes to mind. Because he produced E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire, I can forgive him for a lot, even (gulp) The Wicker Man remake.

There’s also Drew Barrymore, who now has two lifetime Passes from me: the first, for Donnie Darko (executive producer), and the second, for Santa Clarita Diet (again, executive producer). And she backed both up with her star power by appearing in the cast.

Thanx, Gertie!

“No. Don’t do anything, okay? Just relax.

“I’m dead. It can wait until tomorrow.”

Barrymore and co-star (and co-executive producer) Timothy Olyphant are husband and wife realtors, Sheila and Joel Hammond, doing their best to cope with Sheila’s new titular diet, which is (gasp!) human flesh.

Seriously, I haven’t had this much fun with anything zombie since Shaun of the Dead.

Which is why I’m talking about it here, outside of the ¡Qué horror! rundown, since this isn’t really a horror show, so much as it is a comedy with some horror elements.

“Maybe we should just keep driving. Go home, get some clothes, and just never come back.”

“Well, that’s crazy! We can’t just run away. Where would we go?! Oh, we have so much equity in our house!”

“Ah! I didn’t think about the equity! I’m a monster.”

The beauty of the show though is, as much as it’s about the hijinx that result from Sheila’s zombiefication, it’s just as much about the way a family deals with seismic upheavals, about finding family wherever you can, and embracing the reality that, even if something’s changed, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.

And not only do we have Barrymore as the newly confident and energetic Sheila, and Olyphant as the weed-smoking, occasionally manic Joel, but there’s an excellent supporting cast here too, starting with Liv Hewson (as their headstrong daughter Abby) and Skyler Gisondo (as lovable creeper next door, Eric), and stretching out to the two cops who live on either side of the Hammonds (uh-oh), Richard T. Jones and Ricardo Chavira (who also happens to be the jerkface stepfather to the aforementioned lovable creeper Eric).

Oh! And a 2-episode appearance by Grace Zabriskie! So awesome, ‘cause we all know there is No Such Thing As Too Much Grace Zabriskie!

And for another dose of awesome, Portia de Rossi shows up at the tail end of the season (in a role that was apparently written specifically for her).

“Hello.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood.”

“Just saying ‘Hello.’”

“I know your ‘Hello’s, honey, and that one was pouring me a glass of wine.”

If you’ve frequented the Iguana in the past, you’ll know that we’re pretty big here on atypical titles of bone-tired genres, and most everything zombie these days is so SO tired. So I wasn’t going to pass up the chance of trumpeting Santa Clarita Diet just because it wasn’t full-on horror. (Here’s hoping Netflix renews it for a second season.)

I dubbed I Am a Hero “the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.”

I was wrong.

Santa Clarita Diet is the perfect antidote for those all-too-relentlessly grim soap opera zombie titles.

Boom.

“I really don’t think I bit him.”

“But what if you did? And what if that makes him turn, and then he bites someone, and they bite someone and pretty soon, we’re like the biggest a$$holes ever!”

(Santa Clarita Diet OS’ courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com & impawards.com.)

HITMAN
(Review)

Xavier Gens’ Hitman (based on the Eidos computer game) opens to the strains of Schubert, as we are treated to a montage of bald kids being tattooed with bar codes and raised and trained to be killing machines (like something out of Dark Angel).*
Then, within a framing sequence involving a grown-up Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant) and Interpol operative Michael Whittier (Dougray Scott), we flash back three months and enter a rogue assassin thriller we’ve all probably seen before.

In Hitman, we are treated to two of the genre’s stock scenarios: the “assassin is assigned a hit, which turns out to be a set-up,” and the “assassin is assigned a comely target of the opposite gender, whom the assassin doesn’t kill, and ends up on the run with (romantic/sexual entanglement optional).”
It’s probably this decision to utilize these painfully familiar riffs that make Hitman a rather disappointing film. The plot elements that could have provided some fresh ground to cover—notably The Organization, who, in the film, turn orphans and unwanted children into single-minded assassins; and just who is 47 (he is a genetically engineered being in the game, with 47 chromosomes in his DNA, though nothing of the sort is even implied here)—are basically ignored in favour of the pedestrian scenarios used in Skip Wood‘s script. Wood (who also penned the script for Swordfish and is responsible for the screenplay for the upcoming G.I. Joe) just doesn’t deliver anything particularly original or even interesting here.
Sad, since some of Hitman’s action is actually serviceable.
Of course, the cast leaves much to be desired anyway, so maybe this was all a lost cause to begin with.

Olyphant made me pay attention to him after his work on Scream 2 (he really didn’t do much in Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary). He also impressed me in Doug Liman’s Go. And Dreamcatcher being a bad movie really had nothing to do with him, so when Vin Diesel stepped out of 47’s suit (Diesel still retains an executive producer credit on Hitman), I was looking forward to Olyphant’s take on the role. Sadly, though, there are moments where there seems to be something vaguely non-committal about Olyphant’s performance, as if his Agent 47 doesn’t quite know who he’s meant to be.

And while Prison Break’s Robert Knepper (as Russian secret service dude Yuri Marklov) only serves to distract, since I couldn’t quite shake T-Bag from my head, Olga Kurylenko (as comely female target turned fellow fugitive Nika Boronina) is unconvincing; Kurylenko appeared in Vincenzo Natali’s “Quartier de la Madeleine” segment of Paris, Je T’aime and will be seen in the next 007 film, the funkily-titled Quantum of Solace.
Sure, she’s sexy and hot (thus, her date with 007), but she didn’t really act here.
Lost’s future vision-stricken Desmond, Henry Ian Cusick, also has a disastrous turn as arms dealer Udre Belicoff. I’m honestly not sure if it was just me, but that looked like some awfully dodgy looping on Cusick’s part. I’m not even certain if that was Cusick’s voice at all; if it wasn’t, then the bad performance wasn’t entirely his fault. (And to be fair, the script didn’t give much for the character to do other than end up in 47’s sights anyway, in which case, the fault would lie on Cusick’s agent’s head, for fobbing this role off on him.)
Scott probably gives the best consistent performance in the lot, but at the same time, this also isn’t the best performance I’ve seen from him.

As I mentioned above, some of Hitman’s action sequences are actually all right—the hotel and subway sequences come to mind—but whatever tension and suspense they may engender are undermined by the narrative’s structure: since we see both 47 and Whittier at the top of the film, then flash back three months, we know that both will survive any possible life-threatening situations they may encounter in the main bulk of the film itself.
Why get worked up about the character’s chances of getting out alive, when we already know they are alive in three months’ time? Thus, the only genuine tension we can hope for is at the tail end of the film, when we exit the flashback, and return to the framing sequence.
Admittedly, this tack sometimes works—David Fincher used it to excellent effect in Fight Club (I never got to read the novel, so I’m not sure if this was also the narrative structure used by Chuck Palahniuk there)—but a lot of the time (recall J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible 3), it doesn’t.

In the end though, if it’s any consolation, Hitman isn’t a heinous film.
And more to the point—at least perhaps for some—Hitman isn’t a heinous film adaptation of a video game.
It is, however, not particularly impressive either.

* The end credits, in fact, acknowledge the use of clips from Dark Angel, though I don’t recall seeing any (like on a television set or movie house screen) during the film’s proceedings.
At least, I recall seeing that Dark Angel credit…
Though I did get to see some episodes of it, I was never a Dark Angel fan, so I can’t really say for certain, but were those opening shots actually from Dark Angel? (Because if they were, why did Gens choose to recycle them and not shoot his own material? Or was this a decision made after the reported Hitman re-shoots and subsequent editing by Nicolas de Toth, which supposedly did not involve Gens? Is Hitman yet another casualty of studio interference?)

Parting shot: A review of Paris, Je T’aime can be found in the Archive, along with episodic recaps/reactions to Lost.

(Hitman OS courtesy of impawards.com.)