10 More Horror Movies Way Darker Than Advertised
7. Scream 2 (1997)
Wes Craven’s Scream 2 doubled down on the premise of its predecessor, continuing to take apart the kinds of films Craven had been making for the past couple of decades with a meta awareness of horror convention. And yet, with the characters all grown up, at college, and dealing with the emotional baggage of the first film, things feel considerably heavier than last time.
Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her pals have made it to college, but she can’t leave the spectre of her high school killer behind, and soon Ghostface rears his ugly mug once more – despite original killers Billy and Stu (Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard) being six feet under.
Darker, scarier and more serious than its predecessor, Scream 2 knows that it’s a sequel and understands that the rules are different this time around. Sure, there is the Sarah Michelle Gellar cameo, the big headline Jada Pinkett Smith cinema kill, the slapstick physicality of Ghostface, plus the intertextual meta stuff, but this is overshadowed (and the latter literally cut out of the film midway) by the death of resident horror film buff Randy (Jamie Kennedy).
The killers themselves are also darker, more joyless and packing a serious motive: revenge. All in all, it’s not quite the prank calls-n-popcorn romp we were looking for.