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.
Viable Option 