When I first watched “Scream” back in 1996 I thought it was a masterpiece, a horror film filled with endless possibilities. But as I’ve gone on and managed to watch “Scream” again I’ve come to realize that Wes Craven played many people, and (whether I like it or not) the series he followed it with has been successful. “Scream” is just more of the same humdrum slasher fare that we’ve seen a billion times, except it’s served up with the deceit that we’re seeing something wholly original. What with the Ghost Face’s eerie facade and the atmospheric setting, “Scream” definitely has that illusion that what we’re laying our eyes on is something we’ve never seen before. In actuality we have, except Craven and writer Kevin Williamson never quite let on about it. “Scream” is a movie that never knows what it wants to be. Is it a murder mystery posing as a slasher film? Is it a horror comedy? Is it a spoof of slashers? Is it a loving satire? If it pretends to be an anti-slasher then why does it jump head first in to cliché slasher trappings in the final half of the film?
Did Williamson and Craven give up halfway and decide to just go on auto-drive expecting the audience not to care (which they obviously didn’t)? Or did they intend this entire affair to be some sort of meta-slasher? Providing an obnoxious self-awareness, the Craven and Williamson team mimic Quentin Tarantino as much as they can meshing in as many horror movie references as possible. Recall the titles for the audience as a way of cushioning their impending riff on the titles, the duo completely take from aforementioned films like “The Town that Dreaded Sundown” and “Psycho.” At the time of its release, many people considered the first half of “Scream” to be ingenious but while it does break down all security of the entire story by exploring how anyone (even a beloved child actress) can die in this, Craven steals the exact hit from Janet Leigh’s death in “Psycho” even going so far as to keep the surprise a hush hush secret for audiences going in expecting a movie co-starring Drew Barrymore.
Meanwhile the killer (later titled Ghost Face) would go on to eliminate all possibilities of Barrymore’s character ever surviving by explaining what they know and don’t know about the surrounding area. How? Does the killer know about the area fondly? Did the killer take a survey from the neighbors? And if the killer did survey the area, why did no one actually notice strangers wandering around and scoping out Barrymore’s character? Assuming the readers have seen this by now, “Scream” does have a brutally surprising twist by enlisting two characters as the ghost faced killer, not one. But part of the surprise is completely dashed when we discover character Billy has taken part in the murders which Craven makes it obvious by from his introduction where he practically has a banner over his head reading “He’s the killer!”
Meanwhile, Craven and Williamson try to bring this typical slasher film in to more intellectual territory by… pointing out horror clichés we’ve been hearing since the eighties that they pretend they’ve said first. Ever notice how the heroine runs upstairs instead of out the door? Ever notice how the police take so long to come to the house after a 911 call? Notice how everyone who has sex in horror movies dies automatically? Isn’t it weird that the heroine is always a virgin? Ever notice how the heroine trips and falls whenever running away from the killer? I’ve heard those questions since the popularity of the slasher flick since the 1980’s and the duo here simply re-iterate those same questions for audiences who are pretty much duped in to believing they’re the first to ever touch such ground before.
Neve Campbell’s performance as the inadvertent heroine is quite good as Sydney Prescott a girl with a sordid past who finds herself confronted with this masked killer, but the entire cast is pretty much forgettable including Jamie Kennedy as the horror movie buff Randy who is pretty much in the movie to serve a purpose of announcing every movie title the writers imitate, and act as a source of comic relief in case the movie gets too intense for audiences. Once all pretense and self-congratulatory winks to the audience have finished, the climax pretty much goes on auto-drive relying on the basic slasher fare to get us in to the big reveal that Sydney’s stalker is in fact her boyfriend and his friend Randy, both of whom have a homo-erotic partnership/pact to kill everyone as a form of revenge to kill Sydney… which makes sense in the horror world I’m assuming.
Why they didn’t just kill Sydney a long time ago in her sleep or through poison, and then her father while he was on a trip is never quite explained in full, but hey, it’s “Scream.” It’s too intelligent for us to comprehend. If you want a real truly excellent dissection of the slasher sub-genre, look no further than “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.” If you want to hear the same old horror clichés spouted back at you like you’ve never seen a horror movie before, then “Scream” will do the trick. When you break it down in the end, “Scream” is one big illusion and not deserving of its legendary status.