Scream is famous for reigniting the slasher genre during the ‘90s doldrums, and doing so with self-referential irony. This really hijacks any conversation about Scream, and I was surprised upon revisiting it just how little meta material there is in here. But the truth is that Scream, conceived by neophyte screenwriter Kevin Williamson, is primarily meant to be a straight horror film. It simply takes the basic form of your Halloween, My Bloody Valentine or Friday the 13th, and tells it with awareness and intelligence. Reflexivity existed in horror before (for high and low examples, see Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives – possibly my favorite entries of each franchise), but never quite this purely, I guess.
For whatever reason, even while Scream – then titled Scary Movie, and dropping that name would hold enormous repercussions – was simply a free-floating spec script, producers all over Hollywood seized upon the idea of filming it as a comedy. To be honest, that’d have been my instinct too. But Scream wasn’t made as a comedy. Instead, direction fell to Wes Craven, horror maven, most famous for creating A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the movies Scream now sees fit to comment upon. While Craven’s Freddy-style cameo and self-deprecation (characters lambast his older efforts) allow for some meta playfulness, Scream’s central quest is to be a fright flick.
The comedy is still there, something Craven does a lot (only faaaaar more effective than the doofuses in The Last House on the Left) – but it’s only by Scream’s reputation that we even focus upon that. Between the horror, comedy, and even a heavy, unexpected mystery element, Scream is rather difficult to define.
Scream’s greatest success comes right out of the bat. Many (most) horror movies begin with an introductory murder, which often loses its impact through sheer inevitability. We get no sense of that redundancy in Scream, which is good since its opening is a lengthy twelve minutes long. Borrowing an idea from When a Stranger Calls (but not copping to that fact), things start with a phone call, as Casey Becker fields a presumed misdialer (voice of Roger L. Jackson, the series’ unsung hero). Like a slow burn, the call turns flirtatious, then sinister, as the unseen caller threatens Casey’s life…with horror trivia.
For every new hint of doom, we convince ourselves maybe Casey has a chance, because she’s played by Drew Barrymore – and the ultra-famous don’t get offed in intros. Even if, by generic formula, we recognize this futility, we’re still vested in the victim, as our survival instincts are piqued along with hers.
Craven uses performance and camera to slowly, slowly create a nightmare. It all must peak with the killer’s reveal – or the killer’s costume at any rate, and if you follow this subgenre, you know that’s more important. Simply by name-dropping the big horror franchises, Scream is obligated to serve up a villain as visually iconic as Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. Ghostface is a bold enough deign, as his (her, their?) white face and spectral form recall Myers mostly – as per the vaguer dictates of Williamson’s script. Ghost, skeleton, Grim reaper... And for all her struggles, Casey does become the opening victim (well, she and her token boyfriend), but not simply to satisfy genre dictates. Craven sticks with the scene as Casey slowly dies, highlighting tragedy as her parents discover the act. No pure comedy, other than the darkest sort, would dwell upon a death so wholly.
One interesting, hugely informative detail: That Ghostface mask already existed prior to Scream. It is generic, a dime store item, which is necessary for the nature of Ghostface. The killer isn’t some super slasher ala Freddy, but a mortal person emulating horror movies. It’s Leslie Vernon, in a sense, but told with the standard structure. So the killer must appear possible (though mightily improbable), lest the movie’s foundation crumbles. To that end, Ghostface is abnormally fallible; he falls, stumbles, gets smacked around, and it’s only through preplanning (and a mighty boost from story necessity) that he is repeatedly successful.
The standard slasher film follows with the Meet the Meat, where we’re also made wholly aware of whom the Final Girl is. Scream is no different in the broad strokes, giving us a Horny Couple, Nerd, Dopey Deputy, et cetera. But these types rarely register as mere stock roles. Williamson’s dialogue gives them concerns beyond orchestrating themselves towards death. And the cast is substantial, culled from teen soap operas (the wrong lesson Scream’s copycats learned). Fulfilling that old horror axiom that here there be actors before they were famous, only more so, Scream’s cast is wholly noteworthy.
First we meet Final Girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell, of TV’s “Party of Five” formerly). The film’s intent focus upon her alone makes that obvious – and necessary, as the use of Drew Barrymore has already satisfied that Psycho-style fake-out, and you’re allowed only one. Not to mention, Sidney is a virgin…and not just obliquely. This is text, her defining characteristic, a plot motivator – and possibly a source of contention, as the genre’s nascent misogyny actually becomes deeper when carefully plotted. And Sidney has a Deep, Dark Past, as many a Final Girl does. In these opening stages, it’s limited to vague utterances, which is often as far as many ‘80s slashers went; it solidifies in time into a wildly complex backstory, and let’s hold onto that.
Her boyfriend is Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich, who was alongside Campbell in The Craft) – yeah, that name is a Psycho/Halloween reference combined…and possibly also Black Christmas. He’s desperate for sex, and the more we learn of Sidney’s past, the ickier this becomes.
Billy’s minion, Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard, later Shaggy in Scooby-Doo) is one half of the Horny Couple, but let’s not let that define him. He’s anything but bland. In fact, Stu is downright insane, evidently, and notoriously tactless. All this I’ll address in a moment.
Stu’s other half is Tatum Riley (Grindhouse’s Rose McGowan, who makes for a ludicrously attractive blonde as well). Blonde, large of breast and tight of skirt, sexually active, she’s not long for this world. But we know she is, in the slasher dichotomy, a “whore” simply because Sidney is a virgin. There can be only one! A fount of spunk, genuine friendship, and never-ending pop culture references, Tatum is a more concrete person than her slasher designation would indicate. Which means her eventual fate seems more damning, as we only write her off knowing the genre she inhabits.
The odd one out (i.e. the Nerd) is Randy Meeks (“The Jamie Kennedy Experiment’s” Jamie Kennedy) – and note how every character has a last name! Randy loves himself some movies, and expounds upon them at length to his friends, blogs not existing yet. It shall be Randy’s duty to blatantly outline horror tropes for us, making him the primary source of Scream’s reputation as a post-modern classic.
What I’d neglected to mention is that each of these people is also a suspect – as is every single extra passing along behind. Scream is a murder mystery; in fact, it more fully commits to that angle than to its alleged comedy. This is a more obscure slasher trope, evident mostly in those few semi-realistic hack ‘n’ slashes which occurred between 1979 and 1981 – things like Terror Train and Prom Night (yes, Scream namedrops both) which open with pranks gone wrong, then ask us to guess the killer. You certainly don’t see this in the subgenre’s more famous films, where Voorheesesque super-slashers are known simply from the VHS box cover.
So our attentions are diverted constantly trying to figure out who the villain is…or if you’re watching it a second time, picking out clues. It sort of reduces Ghostface’s otherworldliness when he’s just some guy targeting specific people – horror thrives from randomness, and Scream’s excess of plot nullifies that. Though it makes it more engaging in a mainstream sort of way, which is the trade off, and a reason for the movie’s popularity. But I’ll admit it’s silly to see someone lurking in a Ghostface costume in plain daylight (front yards, supermarkets), when the only purpose is to impress us with the killer’s omnipresence – when he’d be more omnipresent (but less threatening) out of costume.
There are two ways to approach Scream’s mystery. You can play amateur detective, like the film’s cops (somewhat more effective than their genre kin). With this tact, you investigate actual clues, a character’s presence and accessories and, when all else fails, motive. Or you can play meta detective, and say Character X is the most likely suspect, therefore is the least likely suspect, because the twist must be a surprise. (I prefer this approach even when watching old school mysteries like The Thin Man.)
Scream is prepared to counter either method. Stu is the most evidently psychotic, therefore we instantly discount him. Billy is suspect, because the boyfriend is always suspect. Thus the police arrest him after Sidney’s first extended encounter with Ghostface (which, by the film’s later plot reveals, ought not to have resulted in Sidney’s death, which it didn’t…but still). Billy is then cleared as Ghostface continues to torment Sidney once he’s in prison. For the literalist, this pretty much clears Billy. For the metaphysicist (or whatever), this is an obvious red herring – too obvious, in fact, which again makes Billy innocent…depending on how you read things.
Because the police are an increased presence, one of their representatives joins our central character roster, and becomes the Dopey Deputy – obviously, too, because “Dewey” alliterates quite well with that. David Arquette (inexplicable one-time WWF star) certainly plays Dewey as the buffoon, struggling to maintain seriousness while the genre says he must be the comic relief. (The characters themselves never seem obliged to fulfill formula, but the movie regards them so.) Dewey is also largely responsible for making Scream a mystery, filtering the sheriff’s latest theories back to Sidney and her pals – and Dewey’s own sister, Tatum.
Scream’s other central character is someone I honestly cannot place in any other slasher movie – reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox, of “Friends” and now “Cougar Town”). In a sense, Gale is on hand to probe the mystery. She’s also there to romance Dewey, a subplot so successful the actors actually married (…and then eventually divorced). She’s also also a meta device, as Scream becomes concerned with the effect of the media and so forth. Also also also, Gale is our exposition machine into Sidney’s backstory. These are a lot of roles to play, along with “queen bitch,” making Gale a fascinating but troublesome part of the ensemble.
Because I mention it, about Sidney’s backstory…The movie dances around it, but I won’t: Sidney’s mother Maureen Prescott was raped and murdered one year ago to the day (because all self-respecting slashers involve anniversaries). Sidney confessed against schoolmate Cotton Weary (Liev Shreiber appearing for a nanosecond, curious considering his celebrity status in the sequels) – wrongly, Gale thinks. The fact of the matter is (and I’m jumping the gun even more here), whomever Ghostface is murdered Maureen.
All these details and more (concerning Maureen’s extra-marital affairs, the town of Woodsboro’s sordid history, etc.) really complicate matters. Add to that our obsession with the killer’s identity, and there’s hardly any time let to simply be a “scary movie.” And then there’s that whole post-modern thing too.
It’s been a long time coming for the characters to acknowledge they’re in a movie. Oh, they spout off movie references time and again, but that doesn’t add up to anything. Once psycho mania has gripped Woodsboro, the teen populace descends upon Randy’s video story (an archaic institution where you picked up so-called “VHS tapes” while talking on your “cellular telephone”). But they seem obsessed with the mere act of watching horror movies, not dissecting them. There’s little more to the intended self-reference than saying “Certain movies sure do exist.” The filmmakers' statement is then, “This movie also exists.”
It’s not the wildest movie-about-movies ever, not by a long shot (Craven’s own New Nightmare is more thematically whole in its movieness). But when you’re getting the mainstream comfortable with post-modernism, it’s a necessary step. “A movie that is aware of other movies, yet is still a serious movie within its own genre.” It’s that seriousness which distinguishes Scream from Airplane!, which is the sort of movie you’d expect Scream to be, by its reputation. (Scream’s failure to be a ZAZ spoof had implications as large as that dropped Scary Movie title.)
Scream’s crisis of identity comes from a uniquely ‘90s sense of irony. By Scream’s own admission, movies of its type are usually braindead artistic vacuums. With stronger characters, a functional plot, and other elements, Scream does a respectful job of avoiding these mistakes. Other times, it openly admits them in. We get, for instance, a rather by-the-books spring-loaded cat scare when the time comes for Tatum to die. She gives a little look, as if to acknowledge how hoary that is. And…that’s it. There’s still a cat scare in Scream. As though admitting something is stupid makes it less stupid.
A more illustrative moment: While watching Halloween on TV (whose actions frequently parallel Scream’s), an extra praises the “obligatory tit shot.” At the same time, Sidney is upstairs breaking genre rules and giving it up to Billy…and unerringly not obliging that shot, even though she disrobes. Most ‘90s horror is so non-exploitative, that could just be something written into every starlet’s contract…Yet Williamson’s script already specified titlessness. I’m not complaining about a lack of nudity (hey, this is the Internet!), but about how perverse it is to mention it, not deliver, and leave it at that. If Scream satisfies a cliché, it’s being ironic. If it avoids a cliché, it’s equally ironic. It’s all pretty reductive.
Though the movie never reaches the heights of its opening scene, it improves towards the end, as the characters become more involved in exploring Scream’s very own “movieness.” Randy pauses Halloween to extrapolate upon what most slasher fans have known since 1981 (if not earlier): the Rules. Rules for surviving a horror movie – sorry, “scary” movie.
1. Never have sex.
2. No drinking or drugs.
3. Never say “I’ll be right back.”
…That’s it?!
I’ll be honest, in 1996 this entire monologue peppered every one of Scream’s omnipresent ads. I went in expecting further exploration of the idea, perhaps acknowledgment of other things. That is, I expected a complete deconstruction of the genre, perhaps something too detailed to even work as a narrative. What we get is underwhelming compared to those expectations. Even so, I forever hear Scream’s “Rules” cited as a defining moment in the genre, as certainly for many viewers who’d only briefly heard of Friday the 13th (as opposed to writing essays on every single entry), this was a revelation. The very notion of deconstructing movies became famous here, leading to a later movie climate with far more casual referencing.
Unlike Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, a movie about moviemakers, Scream is about the viewer, about watching – a pretty passive activity. Its mode of reference is similarly passive. Mentioning a movie – as many as possible – is enough. Reworking I Spit on Your Grave as “I Spit on Your Garage” doesn’t amount to anything more – and it’s unamusing beyond that spark of recognition. In this way, Scream really does just become a series of Airplane! gags, none informing the rest.
Though there are moments of promise (as I said, Scream improves in this section). The cleverest layering occurs as Randy watches Halloween, Jamie (Kennedy) informing Jamie (Lee Curtis) “Behind you Jamie,” just as Ghostface looms behind him.
Good enough. But there’s more. At Gale’s insistence, a camera feed records Randy’s oblivious antics, as we watch those watching Randy watching Halloween telling Randy to look behind him just as he tells Jamie. Just as we might be telling these characters, because a 30-second delay means Ghostface is no longer behind Randy, but near them.
Had Scream’s focus actually been upon moments like that, I’m certain we’d find them more often. But never forget it is a horror movie first, and its greater energies are expended upon an extended chase between Sidney and Ghostface (and many, many others, each doing precisely what Ghostface prefers – even crashing their news vans for no reason). Under Craven’s seasoned hand, this is fundamentally what a slasher would deliver, only better. Actually, it’s the most basic template movie Craven had yet made – sort of a victory lap for a director who’d already expelled his personal demons.
So even if Scream abandons comedy for horror in these moments, it cannot be elemental – not if that murder mystery has any say. We must conclude with the killer(s) revealed, and lose that iconographic Ghostface costuming just at the moment where it’d be most wanted. Therefore…
SPOILERS.
To reiterate, SPOILERS.
It turns out the killers were…the two most obvious suspects. That is, Billy and Stu, who worked in tandem to cover each other’s asses (allowing for justified off screen teleportation). For this surprise to work, you need to have over-anticipated the narrative. (Oh, and it’s harder to feel scared for characters when they might be the killer, which has harmed some earlier scenes.)
As with Friday the 13th, revealing the killer also changes the modus operandi. The goons have Sidney in their clutches, yet opt to monologue at her instead, ala Pamela Voorhees. So she asks about motive. Initially Billy rejects motives as immaterial (in meta terms, the right answer), but there are in fact two motives…
Stu’s: Recreate the movies. This cuts to the notion that violence in cinema creates violence in real life. Craven has repeatedly made films to counter this theory, but Billy’s reductive “Movies just make psychos more creative” is shaky ground. It’s Williamson’s argument, which rejects the notion with frivolous irony, and Craven as mere director can only do so much. Awkward!
Billy’s: Revenge. Ah, that’s always reliable. More specifically, Billy’s mom left him because Sidney’s mom had an affair with Billy’s mom, therefore (logically) Billy raped and murdered Sidney’s mom, and now intends to do likewise to Sidney. As skewed as that reasoning is, it fits perfectly with the funky counter-logic most slashers offer up. Though I doubt irony was the point this time – though if ever it is, god help you! Besides, by making one woman’s adultery (and then later Sidney’s own “sexual anorexia”) the basis for multiple murders, there’s that misogyny we perhaps feared this one slasher film might dodge.
It sounds like I’ve been pretty harsh on Scream. That’s not wholly fair. It is willing to attempt genre commentary, which opens it up to criticisms you’d never level at, say, Dr. Giggles. With self-reflectivity, meta jokes and movie references, Scream opens up a mighty can of worms. Those worms get out of hand, but so be it. Other people now have the freedom to play with these worms (this is a bad metaphor). We’ve perhaps become over-obsessed with Scream’s baseline reference-for-its-own-sake practice (the “Family Guy” approach), but other movies have evolved Scream’s layers quite ingeniously – things like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
And what of horror? Immediately following its success, Scream clones emerged just as Halloween clones once did. I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Valentine, Cherry Falls…The list isn’t as extensive as it was in the early ‘80s, because a faux Scream demands budget, and a cast, and respectability. (These things are all a little teenybopper and watered down, by the way.) None of ‘em got the irony thing as right as Scream did, misunderstanding that movie for their inspiration (when they maybe should’ve looked to more ideal meta movies, like Sunset Blvd. or 8½.) Well, every era gets the horror franchise it deserves (what’d we do to warrant Saw?!), and the ‘90s got Scream – a joke on the former generation, with little to add except that knowingness.
RELATED POSTS
• No. 2 Scream 2 (1997)
• No. 3 Scream 3 (2000)
• No. 4 Scream 4 (2011)
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