Scream (1996)

VERDICT:
7/10 Ghostface Killahs

Still a great concept and still pretty groundbreaking, but also kinda dated nearly 15 years and several viewings later.

Scream is about a High School girl who finds herself the target of a serial killer/horror movie junkie on the one-year anniversary of her mother’s murder. As the body count rises, so do the suspects and before you know it, our scream queen of the hour winds up answering horror trivia to save her own life.

If there’s one thing to be said about writer/director/blood orgy enthusiast Wes Craven is that the guy’s got some damn good ideas. Freddy (who is treated to an awesome cameo here) may very well be the most inspired slasher villain that’s ever been, and in ’94 Craven started breaking down that fourth wall in a big ol’ way with his New Nightmare (where Freddy starts killing the actors from the Nightmare on Elm Street series) and I think it’s safe to say that the Scream franchise is exactly why he’s synonymous with the genre. It’s part-tribute, part-game-changer and while some aspects don’t quite work as well as others, there’s still no other movie quite like it.

It’s like a horror movie made by a true horror aficionado who took everything we got bored with in the genre and turned it on its head so it seemed new. The weird thing is that when push comes to shove, this isn’t a whole lot different from a lot of stuff that put Craven on the map to begin with, but it’s the first time that a horror movie actually felt like it was set in the real world. On the outset, the victims may seem like every stupid teen that’s ever visited Camp Crystal Lake or managed to die on prom night, but the difference this time around is that they’ve actually seen Halloween and know not to say, “I’ll be right back,” when there’s a killer on the loose. It’s amazing how the moment Craven lets his characters in on the rules of surviving a horror movie so that they’re the ones yelling “TURN AROUND YOU FREAKIN’ IDIOT!” instead of us and then still manage to scare the audience on top of it, that’s pretty damn impressive. Feels like one of those things that everyone was begging for and Wes was the first one to answer the call. Too bad that more film makers haven’t tried to follow in his footsteps in this regard.

And the script for the most part is awfully solid, but too much of the dialogue is far too corny for its own good. While I can dig that a lot of it is there to capture that “classic Craven” feel of teens who are just waiting to be killed, they’re too damn smart and too damn realistic to be calling someone a “fuckrag”. It does hurt the overall package in terms of getting us to connect to these youngsters and keeping that authenticity going, but since they’re also more often than not saying everything that’s on our mind in terms of what’s going down around them, it makes it a bit less noticeable in the long run.

But the acting here does leave something to be desired. Actually, the cast isn’t half-bad, it’s just that whole dialogue thing that screws it up. Courteney Cox and David Arquette are the best of the bunch, Neve Campbell just keeps on making all those squinty Neve Cambell faces, Rose McGowan‘s there for sex appeal, I’m still not sure if Jamie Kennedy is annoying or not, Skeet Ulrich is actually pretty good despite his ridiculous haircut, and then there’s Matthew Lillard.

Geez. Matthew Lillard. Fuck that guy. Has watching this guy act ever not been on the same level as brushing your teeth with a powerdrill? Every moment he’s on-screen is a moment we all have to suffer and I don’t know how Wes could have allowed a jackass performance like this to sully his movie. Awful, just awful.

Although it never hurts to have The Fonz around. He makes the pain all better.

If you’ve never seen it before, Scream is the bomb, it’ll make you want to watch horror movies. But once that’s over, you may be better off just moving on and relishing in the memories since this ain’t all that scary once you know what’s waiting around the corner. Almost interested to see what Scre4m is gonna bring to the table, but it’s sure gonna have a hard time topping the original.