Scream: Miramax/ Dimension Films Rating: USA: R/ UK: 18/ Australia: MA
Now, several years after it’s 1996 release, it’s almost impossible to view Wes Craven’s (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Last House on the Left) 1996 deconstructionist slasher parody Scream in an objective light. This film was America’s introduction to Hollywood’s latest major flash in the pan, Kevin Williamson (the writer who would single-handedly regenerate the popularity of the slasher subgenre—for better or for worse) and the first of the hip, self-referential 90’s style of slasher cinema. Much like the original Friday the 13th, this film would inspire several sequels and a glut of derivative clones (most of which failed to live up to the original) that both revitalized, and ultimately almost destroyed the commercial viability of the genre. However, setting aside what we know now, let’s look at Scream and judge it on its own merits.
The film offers us the quintessential slasher plot—a group of teens in a small town are menaced by a masked killer. One teen, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell: Party of Five) lost her mother a year prior—and the murderer may not actually have committed the crime despite Sidney’s insistence that he did. Now Sidney must try to figure out who’s killing her friends and stay alive herself.
Really, that’s all there is to the plot. Sure, I could regale you with the little backstories of each individual character, but it’s not necessary. Ultimately, Scream is a movie about people who know they’re in a movie—and that becomes the film’s main focus. The characters in this film have all grown up studying slasher cinema—and as such, they know the rules: No one who says "I’ll be right back" ever comes back, any girl who doesn’t take a proactive stance in terms of defending herself winds up dead, and virginal heroines always live to come back in the sequel. These characters not only know (and even expound upon) the rules, they spend most of the film talking like movie characters—and the effect is something akin to an ABC After School Special…written by Quentin Tarantino.
The movie’s interesting dynamic can be attributed to screenwriter Williamson’s script. This is, hands down, the finest thing Williamson’s ever penned. The film opens with one of the best, most intense, most unexpected opening sequences I’ve ever seen then rips on for another ninety minutes or so, rarely flagging in terms of pace. Williamson uses a cinematic shorthand in order to give us characters that we can identify with on sight—negating the need to supply pages of boring exposition and character development. We know these characters almost instinctively because they’re either us, or who we’d like to be. Sidney’s a bright and popular young woman, Randy’s the weird guy who knows a lot about movies, Billy’s the slightly dangerous rebel, etc. The characters all verge on being cliché, but Williamson gives them just enough personality to make them seem real.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that Williamson manages to craft a really good mystery here that almost has more in common with the Italian giallo film (see my review of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage for a more detailed discussion of the gialli) than an American slasher. The killer here isn’t some supernatural menace (ala Freddy, Jason, and Michael) and does have a motive beyond the slasher standard—being the embodiment of absolute evil. Williamson and Craven sprinkle in countless red herrings and Macguffins throughout the narrative, causing you to suspect everyone at some point, and making the final revelation a surprise the first time through.
Of course, this isn’t to say that there aren’t problems with the film—because there are. First off, the opening sequence is brilliant—it’s intense and incredibly brutal, but it’s too much for an opening scene. Craven and Williamson set the bar really high with this opening (which always seems sort of Mario Bava-esque to me for some reason)—and nothing else in the film ever manages to live up to it.
Secondly, the film’s climax is a bit of a letdown as well—once our killer sheds the ghostface costume, he’s simply not as scary. Compounding matters here is what I like to refer to as the ’Scooby-Doo denoument’. At the climax, the killer is revealed, then goes into some long exposition highlighting the motives behind the actions, then is thwarted by our heroine (all that’s left out is our killer being taken away saying "I’d have gotten away with it if not for that meddling Sidney Prescott!"). A revelation of motive is nice, but the placement of the scene really messes up the pacing of the film’s climax.
Director Wes Craven brings his impressive visual style to the film, making the movie look much slicker and sharper than most of the 80’s slasher fare (his film, A Nightmare on Elm Street excluded). There are some great shots here (Sidney’s house at dusk, overlooking the Northern California wine country, for example) and some nice lighting and color throughout. However, Craven does rely on a few too many jump scares throughout the film—tight shots where something from outside the frame jumps into the shot and scares the character—and it’s usually something harmless. Lots of directors use jump scares, but to me, they’ve always seemed like cheating.
The performances themselves are of varying quality. Neve Campbell acquits herself surprisingly well for an actress trying to make the transition from TV to feature film. She gives Sidney a certain naïve vulnerability that contrasts nicely with her character’s strong will. Jamie Kennedy is also a great deal of fun playing video nerd Randy. Unfortunately, the sequels would destroy the innocent charm of this character by making him more obnoxious, but here, he’s fun to watch. Rose McGowan simply fills space as the slightly sleazy Tatum, as do David Arquette’s Deputy Dewey and Courtney Cox as reporter Gale Weathers. None of these three are bad—they’re just not great, either.
On the other side of the ledger, Billy and Stu are horrible. Skeet Ulrich is little more than a poor man’s Johnny Depp (save some money, Skeet, it’s a short fifteen minutes) and Matthew Lillard seems to have only one speed: super-annoying (don’t believe me? Check out his performance in SLC Punk--it’s not much of a departure from the character he plays here).
Finally, there are a few interesting cameos—one has Henry Winkler (aka The Fonz) playing the local high school principal. The other is much briefer, and features director Wes Craven himself as a janitor dressed in a dirty fedora, red and green sweater, and named ‘Fred’. Really astute viewers will catch a brief uncredited appearance by The Exorcist’s Linda Blair as a reporter. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the voice acting of Roger L. Jackson. Jackson does Ghostface’s phone voice, and it’s one of the reason’s the character is so effective. Not since Billy in Black Christmas has a phone call inspired so many chills.
For a studio film, this movie is actually quite brutal. As mentioned before, the opening scene is especially graphic, with one female character getting a knife plunged into her chest in slow motion, then being dragged across the lawn with a phone still in her hand—while her horrified parents listen to her death moans. If that weren’t bad enough, another scene shows us her final fate—being gutted and hung from a tree. On top of that, the film features several murders—including a throat slashing, and death by automatic garage door. Craven had to cut some frames from certain scenes in order to get an R rating, but they’re very minor (you probably wouldn’t really notice the difference if you viewed both versions). However, the film has been released in an unrated edition with the snipped footage restored. At any rate, gore fans should find the opening sequence worthy of their admiration, and most mainstream film fans will find the film violent and gory.
In the end, it’s very easy to look back on Scream in a less than flattering light. Because of the success of this film (it broke the 100 million dollar mark in domestic box office) we were treated to not only two lame sequels, but also garbage like Urban Legend and the I Know What You Did Last Summer films (and who can forget such Kevin Williamson masterpieces as Dawson’s Creek and Teaching Mrs. Tingle?). However, if you examine Scream in its proper historical context—and without holding the films spawned in its wake against it, you’ll find that it’s actually a pretty decent little film that lovingly skewers the slasher film subgenre while nudging the audience and winking along with them. Is it one of the greatest horror films ever? Not hardly…but it’s not bad for an American horror flick made in Hollywood—and for that, it gets four stars from me.
A crowd-pleasing smash hit with a sizzling cast - critics are calling Scream the hippest thriller of the year! The sleepy little town of Woodsboro jus...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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