But this is life. This isn’t a movie.
Sure it is, Sid. It’s all a movie. It’s all one great big movie. Only you can’t pick your genre.
I’ll just say from the outset that I intend to hide spoilers behind a tag even though this movie is over twenty-five years old now. I only first saw Scream a couple of years ago now and I was fortunate enough to have managed to not have gotten it spoiled at that time; I have now, I am thrilled to relate, seen all five of the Scream films and I wasn’t spoiled on the identity of the killer with any of them. Obviously, this is the best way to watch these movies, though, even if you have been spoiled, they’re still very much worth watching.
I think Scream has been spun very much one way in terms of the cultural discourse. The first film is seen as the first slasher to engage in meta-commentary on the slasher genre and as the series rolled on, each film demonstrated a self-awareness about whatever different slot it fit in, the second film commenting on the tropes of a sequel, the third film on the tropes of a trilogy, etc. And this meta-commentary is definitely a big part of the series’ appeal. I fear that some of the commentary, particularly in this first film, may feel a little rudimentary to people approaching the film for the first time now, but that’s mainly because the self-awareness that Scream pioneered has, in many ways, permeated so many movies over the years, both horror and other genres. Statements about how you’re more likely to survive if you’re a virgin just simply aren’t as bracing and funny now as they would have been in the mid-nineties.
Luckily, Scream ends up having a lot more on the ball than just this meta element and in those ways, the film has aged quite well. I think I was most surprised by how genuinely disturbing the film is; it feels like it’s a movie that’s often spun as a comedy first, a horror film second, and I actually disagree with that take on the movie. I don’t think Ghostface is a particularly scary villain, at least in this movie; one of the funnier running gags is that Ghostface is incredibly clumsy. This feels like a meta joke in itself; just how well could Michael Myers see out of that mask after all? In real life, he wouldn’t see very well at all this movie posits, so Ghostface is forever running into things and tripping over things. But I still find much of the violence in this movie to be pretty disturbing. I think Wes Craven finds the beats where he can give the violence some weight; other directors, I suspect, wouldn’t have taken some of the pauses he does, to just sit with characters as they die, even more only a few seconds. The opening, which is rightly iconic, for instance, is actually a tour de force. I think this is genuinely one of Drew Barrymore’s best performances; that she’s able to make us care about Casey in just a few minutes is really impressive and as the inescapability of her situation becomes clearer and clearer, there are some really heart-breaking moments. Her terror is real and the moment when she dies, Craven just lingers on her face as she, having pulled off the killer’s mask, stares at the person that has killed her. Likewise, the climactic sequence in the kitchen is incredibly disturbing. That whole third act is pretty crazy, but the last five to ten minutes of the movie are just a knock-out.
Speaking of the kitchen scene, it’s time to talk about the performances which are uniformly excellent. I think this franchise, and I’ll talk more about this as we go, is something I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever seen before, a slasher franchise where a large portion of the appeal is the characters, especially the recurring ones. Neve Campbell is pitch perfect as Sidney Prescott, a girl who embodies a kind of naïve innocence, until the time comes for her to kick ass and then she does that with absolute ferocity. David Arquette finds in Dewey, the bumbling cop, the role of a lifetime and it’s a twitchy, awkward, very funny and utterly weird performance. Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy & Rose McGowan all have energy and charisma (occasionally weird charisma, but charisma nonetheless) to burn in their roles. Courtney Cox is clearly having a blast as alpha news reporter Gale Weathers. And Roger Jackson delivers a fantastic vocal performance as the voice of the killer. It’s just instantly iconic. And in that kitchen scene at the end, let me just say that one performer in particular just takes things so far over the top that it becomes both utterly ridiculous and absolutely fantastic to watch. The performer has since said that they can’t believe Craven allowed the performance to go to that level, but it’s clear why; it’s absurd, but wonderfully so.
Scream is ultimately a fantastic movie, just crackerjack entertainment from the brilliant cold-open to that gonzo finale. That doesn’t necessarily mean we get a great sequel out of the deal though, does it? The list of great horror movies with disappointing sequels is a long one. We’ll talk about that soon enough. For now, I’ll just wrap it up with this: Scream is a classic for a reason and I hope it remains so. 4 stars.
tl;dr – meta-commentary on horror doesn’t skimp on disturbing content and an all around excellent ensemble elevate an already sharp script; bang-up entertainment. 4 stars.