Scream 2

A howling great time.

It's nothing like as inventive as the first Nightmare on Elm Street, but it's much more thoughtful and provocative than most genre horror movies, and more fun.

Good in the first half, begins to fade when new ideas are all used up and then finally staggers exhausted to the finish line.

The fear will send you into your companion's arms, the laughs are cathartic, and Campbell and Courtney Cox kick almost as much butt as Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection.

This time around, the pacing is tight, the production values are slicker and the performances are more assured.

A whodunit as much as it is a thriller, generating its effects by strategically withholding information rather than pumping fountains of gore.

This sequel properly continues the story of the original, lays even more crucial groundwork for its own sequels to play with, and establishes that the Scream formula can be replicated with the right amount of twists and turns.

It soon becomes apparent that Scream 2 is mostly just a cookie-cutter sequel masquerading as a critique of cookie-cutter sequels.

It's a two pronged game of creeps and cretins, where the tingle factor relies on sudden bursts of hammy stock horror action, rather than any prolonged exploitation of tension.

That Tori Spelling plays herself in Scream 2 typifies how hip and timely this stylishly scary sequel can be.