“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
I don’t know that I’ve watched any movie as many times as I’ve watched “Scream”. In addition to being a phenomenon in terms of film, and especially in terms of horror film, it was an absolute phenomenon to me on a personal level. As a kid who grew up watching all the horror he could (which was not easy when one’s parents forbid them from watching R-rated movies), “Scream” hit me like a nuclear bomb. I was substantially younger than the characters, but it still felt like a horror movie world that I could actually inhabit. I guess that’s usually the obvious goal but “Scream” was the first time that I can remember feeling like a slasher movie could actually happen.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day the video came out. It’s a day that’s seared into my brain. It was the last day of school but we all got out early, so two of my friends and I made a mad dash down to the video store to get there before they opened, wait it out, and immediately get the video home to watch it. I had already read everything I could find online in the months before being able to actually see the film, so it was mostly just finally seeing everything come together. Even with all the foreknowledge I had, it was revelatory. I ended up watching it again after my friends left…and again and again over the course of the summer. I’m pretty sure that from at least June to September, I watched “Scream” every night. I definitely kept watching it fairly often after that too. Not only did I love the movie but watching it over and over again gave me an appreciation for the craft of filmmaking that I didn’t have up to that point. On various rewatches, I figured out what Kevin Williamson did as a writer, what Wes Craven accomplished as a director, what the cast brought to the table, etc. My obsession (which I’m honest enough to acknowledge) was known enough in my circles, that my friend whose mom owned a video store in town gave me a copy of a VHS with the laserdisc commentary dubbed onto it, which might as well have been the contents of the briefcase in “Pulp Fiction” to me at that point. It helped me understand even better what went into creating the movie. You would think this would demystify and ruin it for most people. Not for me, though. For me, knowing what made Williamson make the choices he made in the writing process and what Craven’s process for bringing that script to life just made every subsequent viewing even better.
I guess there is kind of a poetry or at least a symmetry to Wes Craven being the one that created horror so scarring that it opened a door for me and created an addiction (which I know doesn’t really make sense but ask your horror nerd friends. They’ll explain it.). The scariest moment in anything I’d ever seen up to that point (and it is still up there honestly) came from Craven’s claim to fame, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Seeing that as a little kid led me on a path that eventually brought me to “Scream” and from there, the floodgates were entirely open. It’s fair to say that a lot of what I know about horror filmmaking and filmmaking, in general, came from those two aforementioned Craven films. On top of that, I ended up seeing John Carpenter’s Halloween due to this movie, which is almost as formative and important to me. I’ve watched that film countless times on its own in addition to every Halloween since I was like 14, if there’s a movie I’ve seen more than “Scream”, it’s probably that… but it’s a close race. Anyway, the main thing I think of when I think of Wes Craven is him talking about kicking off a film off with a really scary scene. If that works as it should, you don’t need to scare the audience as much for the rest of the film until the very end. I can’t think of any other film that encapsulates that like this one. Other films he made have a similar structure, but nothing hits like “Scream”. The opening scene is iconic. Truly. I don’t know that anyone thinks of this film without thinking of Drew Barrymore on the phone. She thinks she’s going have a night watching horror movies with her boyfriend only to have her life actually become one. On top of that, while she’s living a horror movie, she’s discussing horror movies with who would ultimately be her killer. It’s fun and disturbing. There’s nothing quite like it.
So much of the film could be described that way and that is very specifically what Kevin Williamson brought to the table. There had been some self-referential horror before “Scream” in 1996, yes, but many have called this the first postmodern horror film. It’s hard to argue. In theory, a horror movie filled with people constantly referencing horror movies should take you out of the movie and neuter any scare factor that may have existed. It actually does the opposite with Williamson’s hand. In “Scream”, the stream of references instead add texture and grounds the film in a way that horror had really lost by that point. As much as I love a myriad of slasher movies, there was a reason they were all but dead before this point. Zombie Jason punching a dude’s head off is great and Freddy turning someone into a cockroach before crushing them in a roach motel is amusing. I can’t argue that. Super fun stuff. However, there’s no real investment for audiences in the characters being dispatched, so things become less and less frightening as the ante is constantly upped film by film. It became clearer as franchise entries wore on that, yeah, scary movies are generally structured in a certain way where you have heroes trying to defeat a villain or simply survive but the villains at a certain point had become the stars of the films. The characters we’re supposed to care about are actually just people we as an audience want to see killed in new and creative ways by these villains. It’s fun but it’s not particularly scary. What Williamson managed to do seems so simple and easily done but was actually a relatively herculean feat in retrospect. He managed to create characters that you like, that you care about and that you don’t want to see butchered. I mean, yes, epic kill scenes like the garage door bit are awesome but you’re also terrified for the person it’s happening to. It’s the best of both worlds and more than you could have expected at that point.
The majority of the cast is actually more impressive to me now than it even was at the time. Seeing the versatility of Matt Lillard makes me appreciate his scenery-chewing work here (but having said that, I did know guys EXACTLY like Stu in school… they do exist). Jamie Kennedy is fairly restrained and all the better for it. He’s every movie geek’s avatar and manages to turn the standard nerd archetype into something cooler and more interesting than it had ever really been before. The same could be said for David Arquette’s portrayal of Dewey in many ways. He’s comic relief but there’s also more layers than you’d likely expect. Courtney Cox gets to play a character that was basically the exact opposite of what she was known for and pulls it off aplomb. There’s far more going on with her character than there may have been in a lesser film and it’s both a better film and a better franchise for it. She doesn’t so much have an arc as much as she is incrementally less awful as a person. Skeet Ulrich admittedly doesn’t have a lot going on besides being pretty and menacing and looking vaguely like Johnny Depp in ANOES but he manages well enough. Rose McGowan also doesn’t have a lot to do but does manage to hold her own in scenes with either the legit star of the movie and/or dudes that are gleefully going over the top, so she definitely deserves credit for getting so much out of a pretty thankless role. The aforementioned star is Neve Campbell, in a role that launched her career and made her the face of this franchise in a way that very few ever have. It’s also one of maybe the best overall “final girl” roles in horror history. Few are allowed to be as sympathetic while also being as capable as Sidney is portrayed as.
“Scream” is just phenomenally important. I say that speaking for myself obviously but I’m also speaking for horror as a whole. I really doubt that I’m the only one that saw this film and ended up down a rabbit hole that’s brought me to all corners of the genre and never completely let me come up for air. It led to the mini horror resurgence of the ’90s where there were countless attempts to duplicate it but I also think it has a larger role in horror’s full blown return in the 2000s than it’s given credit for. Moreover, as often as it was ripped off, it’s easy to forget how original it was when it was released and still is in a vacuum. It’s a teen movie, a whodunnit mystery, and a hardcore slasher film all rolled up into one wonderfully effective piece of cinema. As many attempts as there’s been, it’s a lightning strike of a film. Nothing truly lives up to what “Scream” accomplished.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch