Get set to ‘Scream’ in a meta, post-modern manner

Above : “Scream 2” will celebrate its 25th-anniversary with a screening on Sunday and Monday. (Photo/Fathom Events)

Long before Facebook purloined the term meta , it meant “among,” “with” or “after,” depending on which residents of ancient Greece was using it – not to mention on what that particular Greek was trying to say.

These days, meta refers to something that’s self-referential. Movies about the making of movies, for example.

And the greatest example of that? Arguably it’s “Scream 2.”

Released in 1997, just a year after the original “Scream,” “Scream 2” – like the original directed by Wes Craven from a screenplay by Kevin Williamson – is a tutorial on how a horror/slasher film is made.

Starring some of the stars who survived the original – including Neve Campbell , Courteney Cox and David Arquette – “Scream 2” works best whenever Jamie Kennedy is on screen.

It is Kennedy who, as the nerdish Randy Meeks, lays out the genre’s template, based on the fact that another serial killer seems to be aping the acts of the original slasher(s).

“The way I see it, someone’s out to make a sequel,” he explains. “You know, cash in on all the movie murder hoopla. So, it’s our job to observe the rules of the sequel.”

And those rules are: “Number one: The body count is always bigger. Number two: The death scenes are always much more elaborate. Carnage candy. And number three: Never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead.”

Good advice. And it’s advice you’ll able to hear Kennedy recite on Sunday and Monday when, in another typical October pre-Halloween celebration, “Scream 2” will screen at a pair of area Regal Cinemas theaters.

On both days, the movie will play at 3 and 7 p.m. at NorthTown Mall and Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone Stadium.

Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote in Entertainment Weekly, “(F)or such fizzy, hiply devised moments of clever choreography alone, ‘Scream 2’ is de-lish, an exercise in post-modern pleasure as sophisticated about the mechanics of movie sequels as the original was savvy about horror flicks.”

Post-modern, meta or whatever, “Scream 2” is a … scream.