MY MOVIE SHELF: Scream 3

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 195  Days to go: 138

Movie #243:  Scream 3

I like a good trilogy. I’m a Star Wars girl, always have been, so trilogies are kind of my thing. I miss the days when trilogies consisted of only three movies, but that’s another story altogether. A good trilogy needs to form a narrative arc that spans all three films. It has to highlight the past from another angle, revealing new motives, new players, and information that wasn’t revealed previously. As Randy (Jamie Kennedy) says — brought back from the grave in a taped revelation by his sister Martha (Heather Matarazzo) — “It’s all about going back to the beginning.”

Scream 3 starts with the third installment of the Stab movies under production. Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), now a TV celebrity no doubt thanks to his Diane Sawyer interview, even cameos as himself. Or, he’s supposed to. Poor Cotton is instead the first casualty of Mr. Ghostface this time around (or second, if you count his fiancée, which apparently no one does), just as he is in Stab 3. The buxom Sarah Darling (Jenny McCarthy) plays the character to next die in the film, and she’s the next to die at the hands of Mr. Ghostface too, who is presumably the director Roman (Scott Foley, looking particularly “raper face”-y), but what the audience knows that Sarah doesn’t is that this new killer doesn’t just do scary killer voice. He mimics all kinds of voices, as he just did to Cotton and Almost Mrs. Cotton. Dun dun DUN!!

This time our girl Sidney (Neve Campbell) is living alone on a hill somewhere. She doesn’t even leave her house to go to her job, she just takes crisis calls on her “office” line like she’s Sandra Bullock in The Net or something. She probably ordered pizza online before it was cool. And while her dog is big, if you ask me that fluffy retriever doesn’t look too menacing. He got scared when Sidney had a bad dream, for Pete’s sake, and that’s not going to do her any good for security. Which is what I assume she’s living in the boonies for. Nobody knows her address, only a few select people know her phone number. This chick doesn’t mess around. She is sick and damn tired of having weird psychopaths chase her with knives.

Of course, Cotton’s death (followed by Sarah’s) brings all the old players out of the woodwork, and by old players I mean the only other two still alive, Dewey and Gale (David Arquette and Courteney Cox, back when they were newly married and totally adorable together). Gale is out for a story, of course, but Dewey is there on the movie set working as a consultant and as security detail for the woman playing Gale in the film, Jennifer Jolie (Parker Posey, my very favorite make-believe ditzy wiseass). This brings out the jealousy in Gale since apparently she and Dewey did not part on the best of terms last time. Yikes.

We also have a new ingénue playing Sidney (Emily Mortimer), and Jennifer’s personal bodyguard Steve Stone (Patrick Warburton), plus McDreamy himself (Patrick Dempsey) as homicide detective Mark Kincaid. Naturally all of these people will at some point or another be placed in a suspicious light.

This time the killer seems to have some connection back to Sidney’s mother, as he keeps leaving pictures of her at his murder scenes, really bringing the story back to the beginning after all. Is it possible Billy and Stu didn’t kill her exactly as they said after all? This movie is about the missing piece.

Just kidding, this movie is just about going from one killing to the next with some slapstick and wise cracking and raised eyebrows in between. The whole thing about Sidney’s mom is a forced and ill-conceived plot point if there ever was one, but I guess if you make it all the way to the third movie you’re not really there for story; you’re there to see how much bigger it can get.

The answer is: significantly bigger. More blood, more gore, more red herrings, more outrageous and thrilling deaths, more scare tactics, and it’s a trilogy so your killer is going to be “super human.” Thanks for keeping us apprised, Randy.

I honestly have a lot of fun with this movie, but it’s a good thing I don’t care for reboots. (Translation: No Scream 4 for me, even though I’m really starting to like Emma Roberts.)

MY MOVIE SHELF: Scream 2

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 196  Days to go: 138

Movie #242:  Scream 2

“There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate – more blood, more gore – carnage candy. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead.”

That was Randy (Jamie Kennedy), back again as our horror movie aficionado, describing the ways in which Scream 2 will be harder-better-faster-stronger than the original. It’s a sequel, see, and sequels have rules too. But once again, while the Scream films abide by the rules, they also uproot them.

It’s two years since the Woodsboro killing spree of Billy and Stu, and our intrepid reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) has written a book that’s been turned into a movie called Stab, with Tori Spelling playing Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), just like Sidney sarcastically predicted in Scream. In an ever-growing attempt to change the boundaries of the horror genre, the movie starts with cameos by Jada Pinkett Smith (pre-Smith) and Omar Epps as Maureen and Phil, Windsor College students out for the night with free passes to an advanced screening of Stab. They simultaneously mock and thwart the lack of African-American representation in horror flicks, only to get brutally murdered in the movie theater (in which Heather Graham is like a naked Rollergirl — she will always be Rollergirl — version of Drew Barrymore’s Casey). (Luke Wilson, it is revealed later, is the movie’s Billy. He has laughably exaggerated bangs in an attempt to mock good old Skeet.) Instantly, the movie tells you the volume has been turned up, and it’s not backing off.

Our next victim comes in the form of Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar), another random cameo part given to a big named star for the sole purpose of dying a gruesome death. Sequels really are something.

We also have Jerry O’Connell as Sidney’s new boyfriend Derek, because apparently Sidney hasn’t considered lesbianism yet, Timothy Olyphant as another movie guy named Mickey, Elise Neil as Sidney’s roommate Hallie , Duane Martin as Gale’s new cameraman Joel who did not read her book before he took this job, Laurie Metcalf as small town reporter Debbie Salt, Rebecca Gayheart and baby Portia de Rossi as ditzy sorority girls, and even Joshua Jackson shows up pre-Dawson’s Creek. And returning for another time around are Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) looking for a little fame and fortune to make up for being falsely accused and convicted of murder — how about that Diane Sawyer interview, Sidney? “Consider it done.” — and Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) rescued from the edge of death in the last film but with significant loss of movement due to nerve damage from his injuries.

Just as Randy says, the deaths are bigger and grosser and there are lots more of them. The scope is more epic, the motives more elaborate and yet more simple. It actually does a really great job of employing the creative mythos of Scream and turning it up to 11. I wouldn’t say it’s better than the original, but it’s quite good. Maybe it’s really more of the second installment of a trilogy ….

MY MOVIE SHELF: Scream

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 197  Days to go: 138

Movie #241:  Scream

I don’t really like scary movies. They’re gross, gory, exploitative, and I’m predisposed to nightmares. As a rule, I avoid them. Scream, however, is a scary movie of a different color. It’s a horror film that turns the genre against itself. With a knowing wink at the well-worn tropes, it skewers and sends up the very nature of scary movies. The result is a clever thrill ride, and I’m a big fan of those.

The movie starts with a gut punch, so to speak, as the adorable young Casey (Drew Barrymore — a big name for such a role) answers the phone to what seems like a wrong number, but the audience knows better. That ominous voice (Roger Jackson) on the other end of the line means bad things are about to happen in what little remains of Casey’s short life, but first they’re going to play a little game.

The killer in Scream likes scary movies a lot. He talks about them lovingly, seductively. He likes to ask his victims about the scary movies they watch. And he masterminds his whole killing spree as if it is itself a movie, with plot twists and frame-ups and rules. When movie geek Randy (Jamie Kennedy) parses out the rules for horror flicks, it is both a keen observation and a mocking put-down. And then the film goes ahead and both adheres to those rules and turns them on their ear.

Our heroine is Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). She doesn’t like horror movies either. She finds them dumb and insulting, and I can’t disagree. Sidney lives in the small town of Woodsboro where a bunch of brutal shit is about to go down. It reminds her of the vicious rape and murder of her mother the year before, and her relationship with boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich, who has managed quite a name for himself considering he’s named after a clay pigeon — PULL!) has suffered under her distress. Her best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan), however is a snarky yet supportive shoulder to lean on who takes Sidney in while Sidney’s father is out-of-town. The town is kind of in mass hysteria from the killings, which feels both outrageous and plausible, and they end up closing school and imposing a curfew. Naturally, this means it’s time to throw a party. Tatum’s boyfriend Stu (Matthew Lillard) has conveniently absent parents, so he has a big bash at his house — a perfect stage for the killer’s final bloodbath. Sidney is tormented and confused and continually bothered by her nemesis newswoman Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) who has always asserted the man convicted of killing Sidney’s mom — Cotton Weary, played by Liev Schreiber — was innocent, but they come together at the end (with a little help from Randy and Tatum’s brother Deputy Dewey, played by the goofy and adorable David Arquette), to write a new ending to this movie.

I catch a few of the (many, many) references here to other famous horror movies, but since I’m not a fan of them I’m sure I miss a lot more. The only ones I’ve watched with any regularity, in fact, are the Freddy Krueger films and since Scream is directed by Wes Craven, I actually think I notice more of those. (My favorite will always be the TV to the face. “In your dreams!” God, that movie cracks me up.) The magic of Scream, however, is that since I’m sure there are so many more inside jokes I’m not getting, it actually makes me feel like I should watch more horror movies. And I have, but they’re mostly just Scream sequels. I have my limits, after all.