Most fans of Wes Craven’s Scream franchise would agree that Scream 2 is a little more tightly paced than the original film. But part of the charm of Scream (1996) is that it doesn’t really follow a three-act structure as much as it has two distinct halves. The first is us getting to know the primary characters, Sidney Prescott, Dewey Riley, Gale Weathers, Tatum Riley, Billy Loomis, Stu Macher, and Randy Meeks. We get a feel for their personalities, we get an idea of how they react differently to the murders of Casey Becker and Steven Orth, and we come to suspect one of them. Then, the second half is the party at Stu’s house, where our suspicion is confirmed but with a twist.
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Scream 2, however, is a bit more crowded a movie, but it breezes by in a more traditional way. The first act consists of the initial pair of murders, introduction of new characters, and reuniting with the first film’s surviving characters. The second act is primarily focused on Gale and Dewey’s investigation. Then the third, of course, is the Ghostface reveal. And, while there’s more plot in the sequel, it never feels overstuffed. Well, save for one scene, which feels like what it is: the product of a rewrite leading into a finale that was also the product of a rewrite.
What Happened to Scream 2?
Scream 2 was released just under one year after Scream, which in hindsight is fairly surprising. It was an inevitable sequel, considering it received substantial praise from critics (significant for the slasher subgenre) and netted $173 million against a price tag of just $15 million. It was a follow-up that was worth it, too, as Scream 2 earned just about the exact same amount of money on a moderately increased budget of $24 million.
So what makes Scream 2‘s quick turnaround surprising? Screenwriter Kevin Williamson had over forty pages of the sequel’s script already finished when the sequel was given the go-ahead in March 1997 (Scream 2, like the first film, debuted in December). In that draft, which amounted to a fleshed-out outline, pretty much all of the narrative’s beats were in place, as were the four killers: Sidney’s boyfriend Derek, her roommate Hallie, Cotton Weary, and Nancy Loomis. However, when production got into gear and Williamson gave the script over to the production, it was leaked onto the internet. The plot details, the killers, everything.
Production continued as intended, but Williamson was there altering his work as much as possible to revise what was leaked. There were three significant alterations from that draft to the final draft: the identities of the killers, the character of Randy, and the character of Joel, Gale’s new cameraman. However, it’s even more complicated than that, as Williamson has since said the leaked script was a “dummy draft” intentionally created to throw off anyone who gets their hands on it.
What Stayed the Same and What Differed?
All in all, Williamson wrote three dummy endings. And for the most part what is in the final cut is far different from what was on the page. Derek essentially takes on the characteristics of Timothy Olyphant’s Mickey Altieri, Hallie is thought dead but reveals herself as a killer, and so on.
There are a few things that remained the same in the third act, however. Sid’s standoff against the killers was still on the stage where she had rehearsed for her upcoming play, Debbie Salt was still revealed as Mrs. Loomis then took out Hallie and Derek (with basically the same dialogue she spouted before taking out Mickey), and it all kicked off by Sid being escorted from the campus by two police officers.
So, on one hand, the bones of the whole problematic sequence we’re about to unpack would still be on the screen even if this dummy draft had become the template of the film’s final cut. However, missing from the dummy draft is the baffling exchange of dialogue Sid and Hallie (who is not in this scene in the dummy draft) have with Officer Richards and Officer Andrews. Hallie asks Officer Richards where they’re taking them, to which Officer Richards replies, “We’d tell ya, but we’d have to kill ya” Richards then gives a sinister, secretive grin over to Officer Andrews who then looks back at the young women with a sinister grin of his own and says “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” at which point Ghostface attacks.
This exchange rips viewers right out of the movie. Why are two police officers who have been tasked specifically with protecting a traumatized young woman look that young woman right in the face and creepily make jokes about murder? They’ve seen that these murders on the campus are completely real. If there’s one thing they would fully avoid joking about with the near victim of two murder sprees, it’s murder. Not to mention, the officers’ dialogue is just pretty lame and a far step down from how smart the rest of the script.
The Hallie Factor
This is also the scene where Hallie dies. And it’s the whole franchise’s biggest logic leap. Trapped in the back seat of the cop car, Sid and Hallie are both forced to climb over Ghostface (Mickey). They successfully do so, but then Sid wants to lift up Ghostface’s mask, so she returns to the car.
It’s certainly logical that she would want to know the identity of her attacker, but the whole scene plays so oddly. She and Hallie have made it a good distance from the car. It’s pretty traditional dumb horror movie character stuff to have evaded death then actively choose to put oneself right back in harm’s way and Sid is not a traditional dumb horror movie character.
Worse yet, the framing just makes what is about to transpire so obvious. After telling Sid that “stupid people go back” and “we should just run” Hallie stands in the street, next to a dumpster more than big enough to conceal a killer from the audience. Sid approaches the car and, surprise, Ghostface is gone. He then leaps out and stabs Hallie. For a series that has always prided itself on being unpredictable, it’s the diametric opposite.
That in and of itself is a logic leap. But worse yet is the question of just how Mickey got out of the car without Hallie (who is facing the car) and Sid (who still would have caught him via her peripheral) not seeing him. It’s fine for horror movies to stretch logic every now and then, but stretching leads to a breaking point, and there are multiple aspects of this whole sequence that are in breaking point territory.
Hallie may have been a dummy draft killer, and many believe neither she nor Derek were ever going to end up the antagonists in the final cut, but this whole scene sure does reek of trying to accomplish two goals. one is to get Sid back on the campus for the showdown and, more glaringly, to kill off a character who initially served an entirely different purpose. There must have been a better way to pull those goals off.
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Image courtesy of Prokino Filmverleih
