Scream 2 adds something to the slash 'n' smirk trilogy's franchise that last year's megahit Scream lacked: dull brutality. The early murders of a pair of college students, amid a scenario calculated to turn the Scream flicks into a cult (read: marketing) phenomenon akin to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, lack the wit and the mystery that made the original instantly engrossing. And the opening film-within-a-film shtick is one of the moldier devices around.

But director Wes Craven's latest improves quickly. A copycat killer has picked up the scent of heroine Neve Campbell's Sydney and her pals, and the witty dialogue flies fast as the bloody circle tightens. Courtney Cox and David Arquette reprise their roles from the original. Liev Schreiber debuts as Cotton, the man wrongly imprisoned for the killing of Sydney's mother. (His character brooded over Scream's plot yet never appeared.) Sarah Michelle Gellar gets offed in a suitably Buffy-like manner. The tension grows.

It's offset by a few delightfully surreal turns: a film class that brands sequels as the turds in cinema's punch bowl; Jerry O'Connell's song-and-dance routine in the school cafeteria (with shameless product placement for Diet Pepsi); an over-the-top college theater production with Sydney as Cassandra. And the climax recalls the Grand Guignol glories of Vincent Price's American International movies. At the Cheri, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle and in the suburbs.