The other strike against Scream 2 had to do with the finale and the unmasking of the killer, and since I don't want to give anything away I can't say much about it, but it didn't have quite the topsy-turvy effect that Scream did. In fact, I was disappointed and felt somewhat cheated.

Enough complaining. I counted two strikes against Scream 2, but two strikes aren't enough for an out. This movie does deliver, and quite well. One part of the movie that stands out spectacularly well is the absolutely spellbinding scene where one of the survivors of the first movie (whose name I will not mention for those who have not yet seen Scream, even though the commercials have revealed much) is standing in the middle of a public park talking to the killer on a cell phone while two other Scream survivors search the park for anyone with a cell phone who might be making the call. Intense and very well done, as also is the scene where Sydney and her college roommate find themselves trapped in the back of a police car with the killer in the driver's seat. The movie-within-a-movie scenes are actually quite funny, once again parodying the horror genre with scenes that clearly echo but are not quite the same as scenes from the original movie. If one can swallow the idea that the events in the first movie were "real life," one can almost imagine them being twisted into what we see as part of "Stab" with Tori Spelling in a starring role.

Now, speculation. There will be a Scream 3, although nobody has said too much about it, like who will be in it. It's a good guess that the survivors will once again carry forward, which means that we lose one more regular, but pick up a couple of new ones. We need to have a new killer, someone that nobody could possibly suspect. It needs to be a huge, huge surprise, something that nobody has ever done before. I think it should be Sydney.

Really! Remember And Then There Were None? That book became a milestone in mystery novels because Agathie Christie had the audacity to have the killer turn out to be one of the first victims. Completely unexpected and certainly startling, she even dropped a hint or two along the way so that we wouldn't feel cheated. Upon rereading the book, it wasn't exactly obvious, but you could she that she had been fair. Surely the great Kevin Williamson could take that idea one step further and have the killer turn out to be the person we expect to be the ultimate victim! Motive? Simple! After having had your mother brutally murdered by a killer one year, then yourself almost killed by the same killer exactly one year later, plus then having a completely different killer chase you all the way from California to Ohio and take a few more of your friends along the way, would you be unhinged? Of course you would. You would go absolutely crazy. Who wouldn't?