Harefooted Halloween: Scream

What I Liked: Holy shit that opening.  They tap into a basic fear of being harassed while home alone.  Your personal space is being penetrated at first by a foreboding voice, then direct threats, then traumatic imagery and finally the fear manifests itself as a fucker in black shrouds and a spooky mask wielding a knife.  You could just watch that, turn it off and be satisfied.  It’s perfectly paced, shot and edited.  It plays more like a short film of its own not only because a well known star (Drew Barrymore (Firestarter)) gets bumped off in the first thirteen minutes in the spirit of Psycho (using When a Stranger Calls as an on-ramp) but also because there isn’t much of a link to the rest of the film (more on that when we get to the wrap up down the road).

Big shoutout to screenwriter Kevin Williamson who put together a very nice script.  What’s really clever about the film isn’t necessarily all the meta shit and horror movie references but that they mess with the slasher formula.  And it’s not a total reinvention.  They move just enough pieces around to make the experience fresh.  The opening feels like it should be in the middle of the film or the finale.  We don’t know this person or her boyfriend but because of the way we’re bluntly thrown into a hostile situation it seems like we should’ve had a connection to these characters from earlier in the story.  They also have the villain, Ghostface, attack our protagonist, Sidney (Neve Campbell (The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride)), very early on which typically wouldn’t occur until past the halfway point.  And Sidney’s boyfriend (Skeet Ulrich (Chill Factor)) is a suspicious character almost from the beginning where they wag him in front of your face for so long that you’re not sure what to believe in terms of him being a suspect.  And the list goes on, like the unusually high number of survivors by the end, who deals the death blow, Ghostface runs and lunges and shit instead of the steady walk we’ve come to expect from a slasher villain, etc.  All risky moves that could’ve blown up in the film’s face but instead they work wonderfully.

The plot moves at a brisk pace due to a lean script.  They don’t fuck around with too much bullshit to drag the movie down.  Deputy Dewey’s (David Arquette (Roadracers)) flirting with ruthless reporter Gale (Courteney Cox (3000 Miles to Graceland)) is probably the one area that they could’ve cut back on but what’s there isn’t that bad.

Ghostface’s phone voice (Roger Jackson (tons of video game shit)) isn’t distorted or processed in a weird way.  Basically it sounds like a regular guy speaking in an aggressive tone and I dig that because it grounds the movie a bit and makes it creepier.  No bizarre squeals, snorts or other throat noises.  And even though we find out the bad guy uses a voice changer to cover up their natural tone the device produces only a subtle effect.  The filmmakers resisted going over the top on this detail and was yet another smart decision that subverts what you expect from a picture like this.

What I Didn’t Like: Ghostface comes across as sorta incompetent for the entre middle portion where he’s constantly being knocked down by Sidney and others.  This guy takes hard ass falls too.  Almost on the level of wrestlers suplex-ing each other around.  If it wasn’t for the absolutely brutal guttings he dishes out he wouldn’t feel all that menacing.  I wish they didn’t make him quite so spaz-y.

I don’t totally get why Ghostface kills anyone besides his target, Sidney.  Maybe it’s to throw the cops off the track?  One death in particular in the middle definitely seems like they simply needed a victim at that beat instead of any logical reason.  (And after a quick look up turns out that’s exactly what happened.)

It’s slightly unfortunate the score is fairly boring.  The one thing missing from the complete package is Ghostface doesn’t have an instantly recognizable or even passable music theme.

A minor gripe but the Freddy Kreuger reference with the school janitor (who according to the internet is Wes Craven’s cameo although he’s completely unrecognizable) is like 1.5 secs long but ridiculously distracting.  They totally could’ve dialed that back by having the trademark striped sweater be less vibrant or they could’ve possibly taken away the fedora.  But when he shows up it’s like a flashing neon sign saying “Do you recognize this!!!”

Overall Impressions: Remarkably all the tweaks and comments on the slasher formula work without being cloying.  What helps is everything mentioned are time tested masterpieces.  I think the newest film referenced is Silence of the Lambs which was only five years old when this came out but that was already stamped a masterwork in its own time.  The next newest is A Nightmare on Elm Street I think which was twelve years old at the time.  So all the horror movie talk is timeless.

And that’s another incredible realization.  The picture doesn’t feel anywhere near as dated as it should.  Aside from some of the obvious stuff like clothing and an old computer it all looks great.  I mean take the opening for example.  You could very easily do that scene today as is.  All you would need to do is swap out the tube TV for a flatscreen and the landline phone for a cell phone.  And that’s just what they did in the 2022 Scream!

Funny enough Wes Craven kicked off the 90’s slasher revival and spawned a slew of imitators same as Halloween did in the late 70’s/early 80’s.  And similarly pretty much all the rip offs fell by the wayside because they were derivative junk.  No others from the time period are remembered as fondly as Scream.

Going into this one I was worried my memory of it from over twenty five years ago would be totally inaccurate and maybe the opening would be cool but the rest wouldn’t hold up.  I’m so glad to report this really is a true classic.  Wes Craven did it again.  He made his mark with the, let’s say quirky, Last House on the Left, put a brand new imaginative spin on slashers with A Nightmare on Elm Street and then had one last trick up his sleeve with the quasi-meta Scream.  I have to credit Williamson’s script with being very well written but Craven’s execution is top notch.  It’s amazing how energetic and youthful the production feels while guided with the confidence of a long time vet of the genre.  It’s Craven’s Frenzy.