Shocktober: Scream

Directed by Wes Craven
Written by Kevin Williamson
Starring Neve Campbell (Sidney), Skeet Ulrich (Billy), and Rose McGowan (Tatum)
Cinematography by Mark Irwin
Edited by Patrick Lussier
Released in 1996

I was riding high off the one-two of Rosemary's Baby and The Descent. Each embody two different styles of horror, but both are equally successful, enjoyable for horror neophytes, and at least adequate in acting and dialogue. Unfortunately, Scream has knocked me off my figurative horse and back into grouch mode.

Let me get to the good first. The best part about Scream is that it makes it's protagonists feel capable of actually defeating the villains. Similarly, the killers don't feel unstoppable and their attacks are just the right amount of messy, which makes sense considering their ultimate reveal. The film gives Neve Campbell's Sidney the proper dosage of self-referential material. She's smart, competent, and aware, but not to the point where her character is sacrificed on the altar of meta. Scream's opening sequence could serve as it's own terrifying short film. It has both the film's scariest moment (Barrymore trying to scream, but being unable to), and its best reference (the killer's gotcha Friday The 13th trivia). Of course, the problem is that the rest of Scream fails to match those moments.

Now to the bad. Throughout film history, movies have investigated what makes their own genre tick, the act of film making and film watching itself, and celebrated the wild and crazy world that is cinema. Among them are some of the greatest films of all time such as Man With A Movie Camera, Singin' In The Rain, and Vertigo. Then there are the films that use referential and meta elements as sprinkles, to distract the viewer from noticing that the core of a film isn't all that different from it's attempting to pick apart.

Scream falls firmly into the latter camp. Its script is choked with references to other, better horror movies (Psycho, Halloween, The Exorcist). Almost every character seems to have infinite knowledge regarding the genre, despite there being only one character designated as a horror-junkie, to the point where otherwise decent performances are ruined. Williamson also constantly reminds you how he is aware of the genre's tropes and how this film will be totally different! However, you would be hard-pressed to distinguish the basics of Scream from every other slasher. There are still masked killers, superfluous characters being offed to no impact, a final girl sequence, and a lame exposition dump detailing the motivations of the murderers.

This is an odd place to say the following, but it's something that's been on my mind for a while that I've never actually written down. And Scream is as good a film as any to use as a jumping off point. I don't like the way most 80's and 90's films look. Compared to previous decades, there are changes in the way films were lit and people looked and dressed that make the physical act of watching movies less pleasurable for me. It's an opinion I've seen nowhere else, so I chalk this annoyance up more to being harmfully nostalgic for past styles than anything else.

Anyway, that's not a knock against Scream's form, which is fine for the most part with a few stand out sequences. However, there are a few tricks that Craven overuses. One is the combination of scary moment + loud music + dutch angle that becomes laughable by the end. The other is the music in general. I can't say for sure that the suspenseful parts of Scream would work better in silence, but that's the general sense I got. It doesn't help that Scream's music feels terribly generic, which is odd considering Craven's horror knowledge. Surely he's reflected on the incredible, inseparable music of Psycho and The Shining, right?

If any genre needs to have the piss taken out of it, it's horror. I imagine part of the reason that Scream was so well-received on its initial release is that it finally ended the endless stream of creatively-bankrupt slashers that had dominated the genre ever since Mrs. Voorhees starting killing nubile teens at Crystal Lake. Scream revealed that sub-genre as silly at best and regressive at worst. For that reason I suppose, I'm glad the movie exists. However, today, it's difficult to see the death blow that Scream apparently dealt.