04/25/10 - Scream

Scream (1996, 111 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117571/

After watching what I think is quite the number of slasher flicks (of which many were poor), I feel I can finally watch Scream and appreciate it. Though I think billed completely as a slasher when it came out, I'd read some things that basically said it mocked its own genre and that some previous knowledge of things like Halloween or Friday the 13th would help. So here I am.

The film follows a group of high school kids as a serial killer terrorizes the area. The female heroine is Sidney (Neve Campbell) while the serial killer is (in a surprise) played by two people: Billy (Skeet Ulrich) and Stuart (Matthew Lillard). There's also the typical assortment of secondary characters who are murdered.

Scream does not hesitate to mock itself throughout the entire 111 minute runtime. You know when you're going "Don't do that!" or "Turn around! Turn around!" in horror films? Well, Scream incorporates all those little things perfectly. For example, one time Sidney complains how the female leads in slashers will always run upstairs instead of running outside. About three minutes later she is faced with this exact same decision and she bolts upstairs. Perhaps the best example though is when one of the kids is watching Halloween and yelling at Jaime Lee Curtis to turn around. All the while, the killer is standing right behind him. But another layer of mockery is added since he's being videoed and the people watching are yelling at him to turn around. It's all tongue-in-cheek though and this is the great thing about Scream. Whereas in most of these other slashers I feel the film is driven forward by the deaths, in Scream there's actually an interesting plot. Perhaps the reason for this is because in Halloween we know that Michael Myers is the main killer or that in the Friday the 13th franchise Jason Voorhees is the main killer. Here, though we're left guessing. And this plays right into another of Scream's strengths. The film frequently leads us toward believing the killer is one guy and then right when we are convinced it's him it'll pull the rug out from under us and have that character killed off. I liked this a whole lot. It provided the slasher genre with this mystery feel that is naturally lacking when, for example, you know Freddy Krueger is going to be the killer. Making the killer be two psychotic friends is excellent as well. Then we get a (perhaps a bit too long) finale where the duo reveal their whole plan to Sidney. It's very James Bond-esque here as the two guys make sure we realize just how crazy they are. But like I said, it's all done in such a cheesy way and so it pans out perfectly.

Scream has a Grindhouse feel to it. Scream came before it though so I guess technically that Grindhouse has a Scream feel to it. Anyway, by this I mean that the whole point of the film is to pay homage to the films it's modelling itself after. Just like Grindhouse, Scream succeeds on doing this with flying colors for all the reasons I said above. Further factoring in to this is this attitude where it never takes itself too seriously. I think if I had waltzed into this viewing expecting to be scared, I would leave disappointed. It's not a very scary movie. It borders on comedy for the whole time as there is so much mockery and satire bubbling around.

Overall, I gave this film a 9/10. Scream does perfectly exactly what it sets out to do: mock it's own genre. The kids fill all the necessary stereotypes and all the "rules" of the slashers are laid out and followed while being laughed at along the way. I loved this film.