ahachman
Since: May, 2012
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Film Maybe I just had to be there.
Scream is a horror-reshaping film that skewers slasher cliches through direct and indirect deconstruction and commentary.
Sidney Prescott is a high-schooler dealing with the confirmed murder and alleged rape of her mother. She and her friends ( a boyfriend, a supportive best friend, a zany douchenozzle, and a passionate horror geek) discuss the pattern they're finding themselves in as more bodies pile up and a ghost-masked killer delivers threatening phone calls to imminent victims. Meanwhile, predatory newshound Gale Weathers and lovable junior officer Dewey cover the proceedings in their own ways.
As satire, the film can feel a little aged and graceless. The tone of the film is incredibly nineties in its self-aware contrarianism, and the way characters directly discuss plot tropes of slashers is effective, especially when juxtaposed against things they are being threatened by as they speak, but at the same time, the film can feel didactic in the way it delivers its commentary. Some of the comedy aspects feel too far out of the tone as well, like a director cameo, and Stu (the douchenozzle) feeling so obnoxious and campy that...it kind of goes back to being genius. It's hard to describe. But yeah, the film did win me over on some things.
For instance, it does understand horror. The opening scene is basically a perfectly-paced tension short film to deliver the opening kill, and tension remains. The other novelties of Scream as a series are that the people under the killer's mask are entirely human and vulnerable (and often clumsy) and that the films are whodunit mysteries, leaving you and the cast unsure who to trust. There's a lot of misdirection and compelling answers that can get shot down by the truth.
I also enjoyed the performances of Gale and Dewey, who seem like moral opposites, but have an oddly lovable weird romance. The theme of predatory news coverage was also strong.
I didn't love the resolution to a key plot point regarding Sidney's mother. It seemed like there was a theme of believing victims, but Sidney's beliefs about her mother's death are partially disproven in a way that felt tone-deaf to me.
I wasn't a teenager who grew up in the pre-Scream era of slashers, so maybe I'll never know. But I was definitely interested in seeing more, and it was well-made.