Reviewed June 21 1999

It's not the gag, it's the way you tell it.

A saying which is never more relevant than in Kevin Williamson's knowing send up of the stalk and slash genre.

Growing up min an age of Friday the 13th, Hallowe'en and Nightmare on Elm Street left their mark on a host of movie fans. While most settled down and got on with their life. Williamson decided to make a living out of exploiting a genre so desperately in need of sending up.

Of course it helped that for the first Scream movie, director Wes Craven saw its potential and played it as a genuinely scary thriller. Kev's gags may be funny but if you laugh all the harder, it's probably because five minutes earlier you actually were screaming into your popcorn.

As much as I liked the original Scream, watching it on video during the summer of 1998 left me with an itchy trigger finger poised over the fast forward.

No such case with the sequel. A wicked concoction which actually treats the audience with a great deal of respect and leaves no plot hole left gaping open.

Every seeming inconsistency is explained from the detective who was stabbed in the back in part one yet now walks with a limp - nerve damage - to a host of red herrings which in most movies would have been left alone by the gullible one dimensional characters.

Scream 3 is on the way and will no doubt see the return of the masked killer; Courtenay Cox and much put upon heroine Neve Campbell. By which time it may be a case of too many trips to the well.

As he proved with The Faculty, Williamson can do this sort of thing in his sleep but there has to come a point where sending up a genre becomes a genre in itself and even the most clever, post modern film buff-turned screenwriter has to change tack in order to survive.

A tactic which he should manage admirably.

Coming soon, the Seventies sci-fi page

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