"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Scream

Producers of violent horror movies like to claim their movies are “controversial.” Here’s a more mainstream-acceptable horror movie that actually is controversial among movie fans. It was hugely popular at the time, but it seems to me like most horror fans today look down on it or sent it. Like it or not, SCREAM was an important landmark in the ongoing history of the horror. It singlehandedly resuscitated the rotting corpse of the slasher movie (at least in its whodunit form inspired by FRIDAY THE 13TH, SLEEPAWAY CAMP, PROM NIGHT, TERROR TRAIN, etc.) It made horror big business again, paving the way for an onslaught of low (and medium) budget horror that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. But alot of horror fans see themselves as outsiders, so it bugs them when a horror movie is popular with people who aren’t as into stabbing and monsters as they are. And in my opinion there is a certain amount of sexism there, because they get mad about teenage girls liking the same movies as them. (Don’t tell them that HALLOWEEN is about teenage girls, they might cry.)

But the real problem with SCREAM is that it cursed us with a smart-assy self-referentialism that to this day still pops out like a screeching cat to ruin many a would-be tense moment.

ScreamSo watching SCREAM in late 2008 comes with baggage. You watch it and can’t help but think of all the mediocre-to-bad movies it inspired and the things the cast have done (or haven’t done) since. Hey, that’s the guy from the SCOOBY DOO movies. That’s the lady that Robert Rodriguez left his wife for. That’s Jamie Kennedy. Hey, I forgot about the guy that looked like Johnny Depp. Didn’t he do a movie with Cuba Gooding Jr.? Is he in TV now? Or does he play Jack Sparrow at Disneyland?

Also you can’t help but think about the writer, Kevin Williamson. Wes Craven obviously pulls his weight as director, but this one’s definitely a writer’s movie. It seemed to many people like such a re-invention of horror that everyone wanted to see what he would do next. Well, he wrote a few similar, lesser horror scripts (I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, THE FACULTY) some terrible ones (TEACHING MRS. TINGLE, later CURSED)and mostly is just known now as the creator of the teen soap opera DAWSON’S CREEK. At the time the style of writing in SCREAM seemed new, now it’s got that DAWSON’S CREEK scent all over it. The soap opera elements stand out more. The gimmick of the characters knowing the cliches of horror movies was a clever way of making them relatable, but the main character begins the movie already a media figure at the center of a highly publicized murder trial and wrongful conviction controversy. So I doubt many kids are watching thinking “That could be me.”

Some of the horror references are kind of intrusive. Why would Sydney, who says she hates “scary movies,” mention THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN?

Also, that mask, such a good choice because it was a real Halloween mask with a very simple but creepy design, has been overexposed due to the popularity of the movie. It’s lost its power, meaningless now like Mickey Mouse.

But you know what? Despite all that this is still a pretty effective movie. Craven is a director who can get into a groove more often than most, and his many cat and mouse scenes get your heart pumping. The killer’s habit of calling on the phone, making you guess where exactly he’s hiding, has a primal effectiveness. And there are a couple other good gimmicks to keep you on your toes, like the hidden camera with the 30 second delay. So you know the killer was standing behind the couch half a minute ago, but you don’t know where he is now. Somewhere nearby.

Despite all the joking and referencing, the main emphasis of the movie is on serious slasher business, and on that level it works – especially in the scene with Drew Barrymore, who does a good charming and then a really good terrified. Definitely better than you often get from a slasher movie non-survivor. A classic scary setup, and that’s the opening scene of the movie. Think about how many horror movies start off with some character getting killed to set up the rest of the movie – usually you forget what that character even looked like by the time you get to the end. So an “opening kill” this memorable is an achievement.

Even some of the postmodernist shit still works, I think. When the killer calls Sydney (Neve Campbell) and quizzes her about horror movies she says she doesn’t like them because “What’s the point they’re all the same, some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door, it’s insulting.” But later she’s being attacked and she has trouble getting out the front door so what does she do? She runs up the stairs. I thought that was great because it always bugs me when people criticize horror movies by saying the characters are dumb because they didn’t do the one perfect strategic thing that they are confident they would be smart enough to do in that situation. Obviously, you or I would stay completely calm and focused and not panic or shit our pants, right? When Sydney runs up the stairs we understand why. It shows that sometimes you have no choice but to run up the stairs. It’s fight or flight, man, and she’s not ready to take on the ghost with the knife.

I must say though that if I did get called by these guys I think I would do pretty good with the horror trivia portion, for example I wouldn’t fall for that trick question about who the killer is in FRIDAY THE 13TH. And I would know other things like John Laroquette is the narrator on TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and Larry Fishburne was in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 and the Michael Meyers mask is a William Shatner mask painted white and with the sideburns cut off. So I could take these guys on in my opinion. Look out scream killers, you met your match.

For alot of people this movie marks the transition into modern, not as good horror. The early ’90s were pretty light on horror, then this started a new wave of “who is the killer?” movies and other horrors featuring youthful casts from TV. After that it was BLAIR WITCH and THE RING’s brood of PG-13 ghost movies and remakes of Asian horror. Then there was SAW and all the remakes which they call “nu horror.” In terms of horror’s evolution it doesn’t seem like that long ago, but watching the movie it does just because of technology: cell phones are scarce (and sometimes brick sized), nobody has caller ID, and it’s hard for cops to check phone records.

A buddy of mine named Thomas jokingly suggested they should remake SCREAM. I wondered what that would mean exactly. At first I thought it would only reference horror from the SCREAM era, like URBAN LEGEND and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. “What’s your favorite scary movie?” “FINAL DESTINATION.” Then I thought only remakes. They specifically make references to the Rob Zombie HALLOWEEN or Michael Bay’s remakes. Then I thought oh yeah, it would be from Platinum Dunes, so it would inexplicably take place in the ’70s. Thomas decided it would be in the ’70s without movie references, they would follow rules from some old book. They would remake that story about kids stalking their schoolmates but without all the pop culture and media elements that everybody remembers. It would be deadly serious with no irony or meta-anything. But it would be really good and act as a sort of spiritual cleansing of modern horror, atoning for everything SCREAM caused and setting us back to a pre-SCREAM moment in horror.

But I don’t know if that’s necessary. If you see SCREAM as one movie, not a movement or a template, it’s pretty good. For some reason we take the goofy shit more personally than we do in some of our classics. We can accept P.J. Soles saying “totally” in HALLOWEEN or wearing her painter’s cap over a hair dryer in CARRIE, but we can’t take a couple pop culture references in this one. We don’t watch HALLOWEEN fuming about the terrible holiday-themed slashers it spawned, or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET mad that the dream-killer gimmick is too clever. But with this one for some reason we sometimes can’t separate the solid slasher movie from some of those little things. Why should we care if this movie inspired later movies to cast people from TV shows we don’t remember that aired on a network that no longer exists? What relevance is it now? But for some reason people will still talk bitterly about “the WB” when they talk about SCREAM.

Oh well. That’s not a battle worth waging. I just want to give credit where credit is due. It’s no ELM STREET and I prefer THE HILLS HAVE EYES but I think Wes Craven can still be proud of this one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Horror, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

13 Responses to “Scream”

  1. The question is how does Scream 4 reacts to horror trends since the last one? Do they keep up the whole slasher gimmick, or do they try to work in all the ‘torture porn’ stuff into the Ghostface modus operandi? He locks five people in a room and makes them play trivia games Jeopardy style, person with the most horror movie knowledge doesn’t get a bear trap slammed through their skull.

  2. Oh fuck, they’re making a Scream 4?

    Let sleeping dogs lie.

    Because they can make you burn when they tell the truth.

  3. A friend of mine suggested that it should be about what happens when somebody does a remake of “STAB” and I laughed and then a second later said, “Yeah, that’s probly what it should be, and probly what it is.” I didn’t think about the torture porn angle, but I bet they will address remakes.

    I’m surprised Neve Campbell signed on, she’s never seemed desperate to make movies before. Hopefully they’ll do a good job but I have no faith in Kevin Williamson.

  4. Neve Campbell? What happened to her anyway? Alot of stuff she did for a time, and then pfft….nothing. Was she in witness relocation or something?

    Vern – That’s actually a clever idea. Imagine faux-STAB remake, done in shitty Platinum Dunes karoyoke style.

    Is Wes Craven back?

  5. Wow, I never really thought about it before but I think Brendan may be right on this. Scream with a SAW twist sounds exactly what they would do present day.

    The “stab” idea also sounds reasonable for a remake. But then it would get all crazy “SYNECDOCHE” style, and we’d have the killer killing newly casted members of a remake to STAB who were also killed during the first STAB, and while during the movie in the remake there is a movie called SCREAM, which is what STAB is to SCREAM in part two but ironically is titled the very same movie that is being portrayed, which closely resembles more of what STAB was based on and has a cast that resembles close to those in the first SCREAM, all the while the original group and its surviving members are there during moments in between SCREAM and STAB thinking of what to do in a remake that was a remake of the movie that was shown in the sequel to the movie that started it all, which they stared in. Not only that, but in this SCREAM they are also killing people off like SAW which they’ll probably be referenced for being unoriginal in their kills, thus having the killers kill themselves for liking SAW movies in a SAW like manner. But SAW movies can’t exist in this world or can they? Though the kills remain endless, the loss of a loved one and the fear of dying becomes the true horrifying fact in their lives. But imagine if they had not only killed people do remakes but parodies as well? We’d then have new sequels to “scary movies” parodying a scene from SCREAM IV killing people who parodied STAB which is a direct reference to SCARY MOVIE referencing SCREAM. Oh, the horror indeed.

    The only way this movie would do it justice, is by having the killers go against the real ghostface killah and the rest of the wu tang wearing masks like they did on 36 chambers. You wouldn’t want to see what method man can do with a rusty screwdriver, some sewing supplies and food.

    Someones Casting Remakes Everywhere Around Me! SCREAM! gettin money! lots and lots of kills y’all

  6. Vern – How about instead of a remake, they’re making a spoof parody of STAB? It would be called POKE.

  7. And “Poke” could be full of B-Grade Mad TV actors, only saying dialogue from movie trailers and popular YouTube clips.

  8. Better yet, it would be titled: SLASHER MOVIE

  9. CJ Holden – I forgot which review talkback it was, but here is that Foywonder review of DER CLOWN I was talking about.

    http://www.foywonder.com/current_columns/foy_0506.html

  10. During my recent first rewatch in at least 15 years, I was shocked, shocked I say, how much it holds up! I still remembered much of the movie, including who was behind it, but I was still on the edge of my seat during the beginning and the finale. While I like NOES better because of personal taste reasons, I would go so far and say that this here might be Wes Craven’s finest directorial work. And Williamson’s script is so damn tightly written. Even the made-up horrorfilm rules work, because at least they commit to them throughout the movie, which is something that the sequels really had trouble with.

    In a perfect world, this would be named in one sentence with PSYCHO, but hey, we can be happy that mainstream critics and non-horror fans liked it as much as they did.

  11. Yeah CJ but PSYCHO made horror better and SCREAM ruined horror forever!!11

  12. Nah, it’s not SCREAM that ruined horror, it was the people who tried to imitate it! And it’s not like it’s “ruined forever”, since horror seems pretty alive, kickin’ and full of good stuff in every subgenre. That’s like saying “The BOURNE sequels ruined action movies forever”, when we still got THE RAID, JOHN WICK, the UNDISPUTEDs and other things.

  13. No! It brought icky, icky norms into horror!!

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