The Texts Are Coming From Inside The House

Year: 2011

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox

Run Time: 1 hour 51 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Here we are at the end of yet another of my franchise marathons. However, like so many of these slasher villains have proven, it’s never truly the end. Betweens remakes, reboots crossovers, and recalibrations, all our favorite killers remain indestructible. In fact, Scream itself is experiencing new life as a surprisingly watchable teen soap on MTV. Nevertheless, let’s take a moment to reflect on where some notable franchises have left us, in honor of the Scream tradition of contemplating the rules and formulas of horror films.

Friday the 13th left this world in a blaze of glory with the one-two punch of the insane, alternately blisteringly gory and leadenly dull Jason Goes to Hell and the zippy but senile Jason X. A Nightmare on Elm Street gave us Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, a thoughtful, chilling masterpiece that reflected on the decade of crap that came before it and recycled it back into something great. Halloween (reviews yet to come) tossed Michael Myers to the winds of the new millennium, letting him get torn apart by the twin evils of web television and Busta Rhymes. Texas Chainsaw introduced Leatherface to Illuminati nipples. And Saw forgot they were even making a film halfway through, leaving their main character quite literally on the cutting room floor.

So what are we to take from all of this? Well, mainly that late sequels suck, except where Wes Craven is involved. Now, 2011 Wes Craven was a much different, softer man than 1994 Wes Craven, and that’s the truth. Scream 4 is no New Nightmare and it doesn’t go around changing any games that I can see. But it’s a damn sight better than it has any right to be, especially coming on the heels of the appalling Scream 3.

I mean, just by extent of not having that dumb-ass voice changer box, this film is like Casablanca in comparison to Scream 3.

Scream 4 begins by retracing its roots. Wait, let me back up. Scream 4 begins with a tongue-in-cheek, self-devouring, instantly divisive opening sequence that I am loathe to spoil if you haven’t seen it, though I err on the side of liking it. Then it retraces its roots, for the first time bringing consummate survivor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) back to her hometown of Woodsboro, California. It’s been over a decade since the series of three murder sprees that defined her life, launching the wildly popular Stab series of horror films (the first three of which were based on her life, the rest of which get increasingly inane, all of which I hope somebody makes one day), and sending her to the top of the best-seller list as the author of a book about stepping out of the shadows, denouncing your role as a victim, and becoming a survivor.

Of course, the second she arrives in town a new murder spree begins as the villainous Ghostface (the evergreen Roger Jackson) turns his attentions to Sidney’s young niece (Emma Roberts) and her bland teen friends, of whom the only important one is the inimitable Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), a horror buff who oozes confidence and androgynous apathy. Sidney must once again team up with Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) and his wife Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) to solve these murders and just maybe save their crumbling marriage.

At least fictionally. Sometimes meta scripts can be painful.

Scream 4 is neither the apotheosis of what a modern take on Scream could be, nor is it the black mark on the franchise that some die-hard fans make it out to be. It politely engages with some modern technological advances (Facebook, Twitter, speakerphone, that sort of thing – trés Gossip Girl), mulls a bit over what it means to be a horror film in the Age of Remakes, and waves at new distribution technology and torture porn in the hallway before realizing it doesn’t actually recognize them and pretending it was swatting a fly or something. There are a few ideas that it bats around about as smoothly as a 46-year-old screenwriter and a 71-year-old director can be expected to (ie. about as well as asking them to navigate Tumblr). But otherwise it finds a fairly solid amount of actual material to work with.

It helps to think of it as Scream Lite, for the viewer on the go who wants to watch their brain cell expenditure. Sure it can be a little goofy (like their dogged assertion that naming a deputy “Anthony Perkins” is a subtle in-joke/veritable laugh riot), and maybe it’s a little flabby around the middle and during its extended finale, and yeah it is never ever scary, but it’s also a great deal of fun. Which is more than I can say for the embalmed gags and McDreamy preening of Scream 3. It’s an excuse to drop into the world of these characters one more time, and though it might be fleeting, it’s hard to find fault in that.

And now that the 90’s are over, we’ll never ever have to look at an all-denim ensemble again.

Admittedly, a lot of Scream 4 is coasting, though when it’s on autopilot it’s at least on the level of a Halloween: H20 rather than an I Know What You Did Last Summer, if that’s any comfort. And when the film is shaken awake, there are some moments that genuinely come alive. The film plays with the ubiquity of video cameras in the modern world, utilizing the technology to create multiple angle perspectives on some of the more effective tension sequences.

Now that I’m done making a total nerd of myself, it’s time to… do that a little bit more. Because the continuity editing in Gale’s scenes is just embarrassing, and I would be remiss if I didn’t bring that up at least once.

Anybody agree? No? Just me?

OK, I need to get my act together with some semblance of a conclusion here. Scream 4 has just really distracted me with its baffling uncategorizability. Scream 4 is an ultimately satisfying bumpy ride with veteran franchise actors squaring off against airbrushed MTV personalities, wooden quips rubbing shoulders with chewy subtext about victimization and American celebrity, and a kick-ass mod rock soundtrack by The Sounds not quite clashing with a romantic Western Marco Beltrami score that reminds us just how valuable he is to this series. In short, it’s a hot mess, but a happy one. Like a plate of nachos. Or a Sia music video.

After all I’ve been through, I can’t say I’m disappointed by that.

Body Count: 15

1. Trudy is stabbed in the chest.
2. Sherrie has her throat slit.
3. Rachel is stabbed in the gut.
4. Marnie is killed offscreen.
5. Jenny is stabbed to death.
6. Olivia is stabbed to death.
7. Rebecca is stabbed in the gut.
8. Hoss is stabbed in the back.
9. Perkins is stabbed in the forehead.
10. Mrs. Roberts is stabbed through the back of the neck.
11. Robbie is stabbed to death.
12. Kirby is stabbed in the gut.
13. Trevor is shot in the head.
14. [Charlie is stabbed in the heart.]
15. [Jill is shot in the chest.] 

TL;DR: Scream 4 is a messy, but decent franchise ender (for now).

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1217

Reviews In This Series
Scream (Craven, 1996)
Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)
Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)
Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)

Hellular Telephones

Year: 2000

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Wes Craven is not a horror director. That is to say – like so many before him – he is a director who began his career with a pair or earth-shaking horror flicks and was immediately put in a box, not really allowed to do anything outside the genre. You’ll never catch me complaining about this, because the man has turned out some of the best genre pictures in three consecutive generations. But the fact remains that Craven had other stories to tell.

It was in pursuit of one of those stories – 1999’s Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep,  - that Craven was strong-armed into helming the third entry in the Scream franchise. He agreed to come back in exchange for a green light on his heartwarming violin picture. Needless to say, his music-loving heart wasn’t in it. And neither was Kevin Williamson. 

The screamsmith was far too busy with the seminal, life-changing teen soap Dawson’s Creek to write more than a treatment, and screenplay duties were left to one Ehren Kruger, who must have gotten the gig on the strength of his last name alone, because his CV is a gaping hole that eventually leads to such pivotal masterworks as The Ring Two and three Transformers sequels.

As you may have already guessed, the Scream 3, she is not so good.

I mean, maybe it might have been if Meryl Streep was in it.

Scream 3 instantly starts us off on the wrong foot with its cameo opening deaths: recurring character Cotton Weary (Live Schreiber) and his girlfriend Christine (Kelly Rutherford). Cotton I can understand. We’re capping off a trilogy after all. But Kelly Rutherford? She’s so inadequately famous for this role that Scream 3 is listed second on her IMDb “Known For” page. That’s just embarrassing.

Anyway, these two get murdered using a plot device so New Millennium, it’s all I can take not to vomit all over my keyboard: Apparently Ghostface (the ever reliable Roger Jackson) now has a voice processor machine, via which he can perfectly imitate the voice of any character in the movie. This is technology that doesn’t even exist now, 15 years later, and it s deeply, unequivocally irritating. It would be a better plot point just to say that he’s great at doing impressions and leave it at that. It would still be hideously ludicrous, but at least it doesn’t make me want to smash my Blu-Ray disc against a concrete wall.

Alright, it’s out of my system. Scream 3 depicts the production of Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro, a sequel to the two highly successful horror films based on the life and times of Sidney Prescott (Never Campbell), who had two sets of her friends get murdered in high school and college. Fun stuff. Real life Sidney is now a recluse, living in a remote house in the mountains and working for a women’s crisis counseling hotline. When the cast of Stab 3 begins to die in the order that they are killed in the script, Sidney once again teams up with Woodsboro deputy-turned Hollywood consultant Dewey Riley (David Arquette),  and the acid-tongued reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), as well at the newcomer, the movie-loving, suspiciously macabre Detective Kincaid (McDreamy).

Ah, don’t you miss the 2000’s?

Honestly, this is a great plot on paper. The killer is bringing the movie to life, but constant rewrites (one of the film’s more successful self-reflexive jokes) have left three versions of the script floating around, and nobody knows which copy the killer got a hold of. But just like Scream 2 before it, this great concept slips through its fingers before it even gets a chance to establish a pattern, degrading into a mush of stabbings, cell phone calls, and sinister faxes. We never even see the script we’re supposed to be worried is coming to life.

The difference between Scream 2 and this one is that it still had a solid character arc to fall back on. That film was about Sidney processing her old trauma under the shadow of a new one. This one is about Sidney sitting in a variety of comfy chairs, out of which she occasionally rises for some vigorous avoid-the-knife calisthenics.

There are some stabs (ha) at character expositions, in which Sidney’s mother Maureen (Lynn McKee) is revealed to have a secret past. But these are rendered entirely useless by the script’s dogged insistence on vilifying Maureen as being a slut because she was raped, which relies on such twisted, ugly gender politics that making Megan Fox’s ass a more nuanced character than her actual role in Transofrmers 2 actually seems like a progressive step.

Really, the script is just a drag, replacing the series’ characteristic movie references with a rotting heap of F words in a feckless attempt at being “edgy.”

Scream 3 is about as edgy as a Dungeons and Dragons die.

I do have love in my heart for all the Scream movies. Even this – the left-handed stepchild of the franchise. But sometimes you have to work hard in a loving relationship, and focus on the good, which is what I shall do here. There are a good handful of genuinely funny moments, though they are more broadly comic than the franchise is accustomed to. So at least the sense of humor is intact, though there is only one sequence (a chase scene through a stage recreation of Sidney’s old home) that even approaches the live wire tension of its predecessors. At least two moments achieve that delicate balance mingling horror and comedy, and the cast ain’t half bad.

Actually, that is to say, they’re exactly half bad. The cadre of pretty young thangs shoveled into the film’s bloated midsection (including Jenny McCarthy, Emily Mortimer, Matt Keeslar, and Deon Richmond) is uniformly anemic, though Parker Posey breaks free from the mire once she’s called upon to do some stellar one-on-one time with Courteney Cox. David Arquette, on the other hand, is the exact opposite, straining to connect the dots of his undernourished love-hate relationship with then-new wife Cox., but excelling once again at subtle, self-deprecating comedy. Cox herself is good as ever, though forced to act from behind a set of bangs that seem to have been burned off with acid. Neve Campbell and Patrick Dempsey fail to make much of an impression, spending all their time as they do gnashing their teeth at one another, but Scott Foley finds his time to shine as harried young director Roman Bridger.

Really, it’s not an inspiring set of pros. Especially not when the cons include those bangs. So I leave you with this: Scream 3 is the worst Scream movie. It’s still an alright Scream movie, but it’s the worst. What can I say? I’m in Wes Craven’s court till the day I die, but you can’t win ‘em all.

And sometimes you pick the wrong day to insult your hairstylist's favorite band.

Body Count: 10

1. Christine is stabbed in the back.
2. Cotton is stabbed in the chest.
3. Sarah is stabbed in the back and shoved through a window.
4. Stone is stabbed in the back and beaten with a pan.
5. Tom dies in a gas explosion.
6. Angelina is stabbed in the torso.
7. Tyson is stabbed in the gut.
8. Jennifer is stabbed in the back and shot.
9. John Milton has his throat sit. 
10. [Roman is shot in the head.]

TL;DR: Scream 3 is the weakest of a fairly strong bunch.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1266
Reviews In This Series
Scream (Craven, 1996)
Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)
Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)
Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)

Women In Horror Month: Is That Your Final Answer?

What do you know, but it's already a week into February. Where does the time go?

I don't know whose job it is to decide these things but we are officially celebrating Women in Horror Month, and I would be loathe to ignore my calling. Throughout the month I will have several features celebrating women and their contributions to the horror genre, but first the obvious.

Because I'm me, I'd like to open with my

TOP TEN FINAL GIRLS

#10 Alice Johnson (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child)

Played By: Lisa Wilcox

A character that manages to survive in my esteem even in spite of the entirely terrible and incoherent Part 5. Alice is essentially the Tommy Jarvis of the Nightmare franchise, a late-to-the-game player that defeats a horror icon multiple times - and lives to tell the tale. Where most Final Girls who have a return get their comeuppance, she sticks to her guns and makes Freddy her chew toy.

#9 Ginny Field (Friday the 13th Part 2)

Played By: Amy Steel

One of the smartest of Jason's victims, child psychologist Ginny Field manages to get inside his head and trick her way to survival. She's one of the only Final Girls to actually outwit the killer instead of wail on him with a machete for 20 minutes. Although she does get a few good whacks in during an especially memorable chainsaw sequence.

#8 Marybeth Dunston (Hatchet II)

Played By: Tamara Feldman, Danielle Harris

Although she was certainly a sideshow in the first Hatchet film, perennial 21st Century Final Girl Marybeth Dunston was given new life when genre veteran Danielle Harris stepped into the role. Having appeared in four Halloween movies (two of them as a child!), she was the perfect choice to sass up what needed to be a punchy role opposite King Jason himself, Kane Hodder.

#7 Jannicke (Cold Prey, Cold Prey 2)

Played By: Ingrid Bolsø Berdal

Sexy. Norwegian. Badass. Jannicke has seen more than her share of trouble, so she decided to make some of her own. Despite one terrifically dumb decision that extended the finale of the sequel for a good fifteen minutes, she is still one of the most consistently intelligent and entertaining slasher protagonists of them all.

#6 Sidney Prescott (Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4)

Played By: Neve Campbell

Darn but I do love myself a sarcastic heroine. Sidney hates horror movies for being a series of reductive and insulting clichés, so her worst nightmare comes true when she is trapped in one. She's still alive and kicking though, so hats off to seeing herself through four installments of a notorious director's franchise.

#5 Sarah (The Descent)

Played By: Shauna MacDonald

Savage womanhood at its finest. She's minding her own business, just trying to get over the death of her cheating husband and daughter when she is attacked by a horde of underground flesh-eating monsters. However, she quickly turns the tables and although her ending might not exactly be happy, it's absolutely fitting and resonant.

#4 Nancy Thompson (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

Played By: Heather Langenkamp

So good they brought her back. Twice. Decades apart. Nancy is everything a teen protagonist should be: lovable, smart, a little bit silly, and, most importantly, a teenager. Although Langenkamp's acting isn't exactly top drawer, it matches perfectly with the genre and keeps Nightmare going strong a good 30 years after its release.

#3 Laurie Strode (Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later)

Played By: Jamie Lee Curtis

How could I not include her? She's not gonna be number one due to her unfortunate habit of dropping weapons right next to masked serial murderers, but she's one of the most persistent and incredible Final Girls due to Jamie Lee Curtis' unmatched slasher performance. She was so good they retconned her offscreen death from Part 4 to bring her back in a blaze of glory.

#2 Tina Shepard (Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood)

Played By: Lar Park-Lincoln

AKA Carrie. This telekinetic teen kicks some serious Voorhees butt. This is no small feat, especially considering that in this installment the masked galunk was played by Kane Hodder for the very first time. Definitely one of my favorite installments of the series, in large part due to Tina's incredible prowess at being awesome.

#1 Erin (You're Next)

Played By: Sharni Vinson

Who couldn't have predicted this one? The only Final Girl I've ever seen who is more proficient with an axe than her pursuers. Pitted against multiple foes, she easily outstrips any of her single-villain peers, all with a flawless Australian accent.
Word Count: 781

Redial

Year: 1997

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

Run Time: 2 hours

MPAA Rating: R

Alright, let's do this thing. I've been sitting on this post since I watched Scream 2 with Sergio and my family in late 2013. Considering that the film is a great sequel to one of my favorite horror movies, it shouldn't have been too hard to knock out of the park, but guess what? I had to look for jobs. And then I got one, which is not any more conducive to blog writing.

But here we are now and I've settled into a routine and found some time to really get down to business. With the beginning of the semester looming on the horizon, I decided I really should clear my slate once and for all and write up the two reviews I have been lagging behind on. So get ready for some extreme review action with power grip!

Sidebar: I would buy a Neve Campbell action figure.

So Scream happened. Upon its release in 1996, horror culture lit up like a lightning rod. Wes Craven was back in the game, as was the by then defunct slasher format, this time with a postmodern twist. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson catapulted to stardom (he would return flailing to Earth with a dull thud a few short years later, but that's a story for another time) and Hollywood was reeling in the profits.

Hot on the heels of their massive success, Dimension Films quickly commissioned a sequel, to be released a mere 51 weeks later. That might seem unimpressive to people who aren't in the film business, but let me tell you that's like demanding a mother to give birth to a fully grown child in three months. The fact that the film turned out as well as it did is largely due to what must have been some impressive contractual wrangling.

Through some unholy pact with the devil, they managed to get Craven and Williamson to sign on again, as well as stars David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and Jamie Kennedy. And composer Marco Beltrami, whose tremendous influence on the films is rarely appreciated.

While there was little to no buzz during the production of the original film (And why would there be? Nobody had any idea of the massive asteroidal impact it would have on pop culture), Scream 2 had the fan mags flying off the shelves like they were in a Ghostbusters movie and eventually the shooting script was leaked onto the Internet (which was barely even a thing at this point, but people were already learning how to use it to explore new frontiers of douchebaggery). 

Frantic rewrites and constant shifts in the killer's identity during production to avoid another leaked ending left the crew staggering. So when people complain about the final reveal of who is behind the Ghostface mask this time around (which I'll talk about more later in a spoiler-marked zone), just let them know that society didn't earn the original ending. We ruined it for ourselves. Like petulant children. So there.

At this point, I'm surprised it didn't turn out to be Fat Albert under there.

Thanks to Drew Berrymore's career-reviving turn as Casey Becker, every hot young thing in town was clambering to be the next opening victim, but the honor this time around was bestowed on a pre-Will Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps as Maureen and Phil, two college students attending the premiere of the movie Stab, which is a parody of Scream, but in this universe is based on "The Woodsboro Murders," the book Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) wrote about her experiences in the previous film.

This meta addition to the franchise is one of many, as Scream 2 more thoroughly explores the concepts of not only characters that are aware that they're in a movie, but are aware that somebody is trying to make a sequel and possibly turn it into a franchise. Just as clever and intelligent as the first, this all makes a lot more sense if you're actually watching it, I promise. 

This element is perhaps even better than in the original Scream (although I do have one small complaint about the "copycat sequel" conceit being dropped in the second half, largely - I suspect - due to last minute rewrites), which had fun playing with genre conventions, but didn't quite utilize them to their full capacity, opting instead for more of a whodunit mystery angle. 

Anyway, Maureen and Phil bite it in a scene that is too similar to the opening of He Knows You're Alone to be unaware of its pedigree but different enough that it manages to be a completely unique (and classic) entity. Although it's somewhat disappointing that Ghostface doesn't use a phone to torment his victims in this scene, his puckish glee at dispatching them in the middle of a theater filled with people dressed in masks (to celebrate the opening of the movie) is a worthy substitute.

Is Will Smith a trade-up or a trade-down from Omar Epps? Discuss.

Moving on to the real people - Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is now a theatre major at Windsor College and she's just trying to move on from her tragedy. She's still friends with Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who happens to go to the same college because of course. Remember this is written by the guy who did Dawson's Creek.

She has a new boyfriend Derek (Jerry O'Connell), a pre-med student who's nice enough but much too bland, and a new best friend/roommate in Hallie (Elise Neal), who is notable for being a black character with a prominent role in the proceedings who survives for a massive chunk of the running time and has actual character traits. Yay! Diversity!

Upon the release of Stab, Sidney has been getting prank phone calls from Ghostface imitators, but she doesn't let it phase her. Things get worse when she learns about the deaths of Maureen and Phil, and she begins to fear the same things might be happening again after the death of a sorority girl named Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar, who is introduced watching Nosferatu on TV and accompanied by a girlish squeal from Yours Truly).

Once the killings start up in earnest, Gale Weathers is back on the scene, sniffing up her scoop like a bloodhound. Also reappearing is Deputy Dewey (David Arquette), who just wants to make sure Sid is OK. But he mostly just scowls at Gale, who gave him a less than manly characterization in her tell-all book. But it's a thin line between love and hate and the two rekindle things as they work together to solve the mystery of the new serial murders.

However, it's also a thin line between mass murderer and boyfriend material so Sidney shuts herself off from the world, suspecting the killer to be somebody she knows. Everybody is a suspect! And the fact that Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), the man she wrongfully accused of murder is back and threatening her in order to get an interview and fifteen minutes of fame does little to comfort her.

The fact that she's learned from her experiences in the previous movie are but one of the many reasons that Scream 2 is a great sequel. Taking characters and situations from the original and either deepening them or turning them on their heads, the film is a perfect sequel - expanding greatly on the original story but also maintaining its own unique presence as a great standalone horror comedy.

And I never ever regret any second of any film where David Arquette is onscreen.

Gale's role in the original Woodsboro killings has made her a prime target for the buzzing reporters as they try to dig into the story. A great reversal from the first film, Gale finds herself shadowed by her own annoying reporter, Debbie Salt (Laurie Metcalf), a local woman who never fails to get a rise out of her (and elicit some of the best one-liners from a character with a veritable encyclopedia of bitchy putdowns).

While the comedy and the horror are mostly separate from one another (the former apparent largely in the interactions between Randy, Dewey, and Gale and the latter in the stalking scenes with Sidney), both have their moments in the spotlight with several sidesplitting scenes in the second act and two back-to-back sharply choreographed tension-filled scares in the third. 

And although the middle of the film tends toward the draggy side, the film is bookended with a series of scenes of such caliber that it's an easy fault to ignore.

And the middle does include the tremendously trippy and great "Cassandra" sequence, a holdover from Craven's days as an English professor.

Here's where we enter spoilers territory. If you are of a mind to watch this movie on your own, skip to the picture of Portia de Rossi and her terrible eyebrows. (Yes! Lindsay Bluth is in this movie!)

So. The killers. We had to come to that eventually. Originally, they were scripted to be Hallie and Derek, which would have been tremendously interesting, had the dicks on the Internet not ruined everything for the righteous and pure of heart horror fans that would never have leaked any information about a beloved franchise.

Not that I'm mad or anything.

What we do get is an overwhelmingly confusing reveal. The first killer (of course there's two) turns out to be Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), a character so inconsequential that I didn't even include him in my plot rundown. In fact, my sister didn't even remember him and thought he was Derek for about five minutes of the final scene.

And the other killer is... local reporter Debbie Salt. But she's really Billy Loomis's (the killer from the original) mother, see? In disguise! Get it? I... what? The fact that both of the killers are onscreen for about as long as the crew member who accidentally stuck his butt into one shot in Cici's scene was infuriating to many. I mean, what's the point of a mystery if the perpetrators aren't even guessable characters?

So their identities do kind of suck, but! But! The finale is still sharp and witty, making great use of Sidney's relationship with Billy and ending with some truly fantastic onstage action and zippy one-liners. It all explodes in a geyser of camp and blood and hilarity, much like the original film and loses none of Scream's integrity and engaging power.

So even though the killer's might as well have been two oven mitts, the scene they get is one for the Gods and I personally think that's an even tradeoff. After spending so much time with 80's slashers, I'm just glad that 1) I can see everything that's happening and 2) the reveal is comprehensible if you're not a schizophrenic.

Welcome back, spoilers avoiders! Now you can read on, safe in the knowledge that you won't find out that Portia's eyebrows are the killer until you watch the movie.

This review ended up much longer than I anticipated, so I'm gonna wrap up here before the last of you falls asleep at your keyboards. 

The humor is top notch, the meta is even better (the Stab scenes featuring Heather Graham and Tori Spelling are hysterically terrible), and although none of it is quite as scary as the original film and the middle can be a slog, two showstopping scenes (the girls get in a car crash with Ghostface and Gale is chased through a sound studio) and the bombastic finale make it all worth every penny.

Scream 2 is a worthy sequel despite its production woes and maintains the consistent gold standard quality of Wes Craven's 90's postmodern period. Although the legions of terrible Scream imitations were already saturating the market, this film stood above the current to prove that it could still be done well under a skillful guiding hand.

In conclusion, Portia de Rossi has terrible eyebrows.

Killer: Ghostface (voiced by Roger Jackson)

Final Girl: Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell)

Best Kill: Omar Epps is stabbed in the ear through a bathroom stall.

Sign of the Times: BROWN LIPSTICK; CiCi has one of those see-through phones.

Scariest Moment: Sidney and Hallie have to climb over an unconscious Ghostface in the front seat of a cop car.

Weirdest Moment: Ghostface threatens Sidney via instant messaging.

Champion Dialogue: "Everybody thinks sororities are just about blowjobs, but it's not true."

Body Count: 10

1. Phil is stabbed in the temple through a bathroom stall.
2. Maureen is stabbed to death in a crowded movie theater. 
3. Cici is stabbed and thrown off a balcony.
4. [Randy is stabbed to death and has his throat slit.] 
5. Officer Andrews has his throat slashed with a knife.
6. Officer Richards gets his head impaled by a pipe during a car accident.
7. Hallie is stabbed to death.
8. Derek is shot in the chest.
9. [Mickey is shot 16 times in the chest.]
10. [Mrs. Loomis is shot to death.] 

TL;DR: Scream 2 is a rare sequel that continues the story of the original in a unique and exciting way.

Rating: 9/10

Word Count: 2188

Reviews In This Series

Scream (Craven, 1996)

Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)

Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)

Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)

Terror on the Landline

Year: 1996

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

Run Time: 1 hour 51 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As a Christmas present to myself, I picked up the BluRay box set of the first three Scream movies and two documentaries at Target. It was only ten bucks, how could I not? (I promise I'm not a corporate shill for Target - although I wish I was. I'd be making more money on this blog, that's for sure.)

The purchase afforded me a great opportunity to review one of my absolute favorite horror films of all time. In fact, without Scream, this blog wouldn't exist. At least, not in the form it takes today.

It all started way back when in early 2011. I was looking for a good movie to watch, and the only one coming out that looked interesting at all was Wes Craven's Scream 4. I wasn't really a fan of horror films at the time, although I loved reading horror fiction. 

Goodness knows why I hadn't made the leap to watching films yet - I think I thought I was too scared of them despite having already seen The Sixth Sense, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, and Drag Me To Hell. Whatever. I was a fool. The fact remains that I was intrigued by the trailer for Scream 4 and made the momentous decision to rent the first three films from Netflix to catch up.

I devoured those movies with the voracity a kid who just discovered ice cream sandwiches. I thought they were scary, hilarious, and well-crafted. The only thing was, I hadn't seen any of the films they were referencing. Scream 4 had long since came and went in the time it took to receive and view the entire trilogy so to feed my new hunger, I turned to the films mentioned by the Screams to provide some important background.

That's how I spent summer watching every single Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street film, Halloween, The Blair Witch Project, both Paranormal Activities (at the time), Sleepaway Camp, and a whole canoe load of other shockers. 

I fell in love with the genre. Head over heels. I became a black hole, sucking in terrible three-dollar DVDs like they were candy. I never did watch Scream 4 until the DVD release in October, but by that time I was a committed disciple.

Scream began the chain reaction that led me to Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Jamie Lee Curtis. And later [REC] and Dario Argento and Prom Night. Pinhead. Gingerdead. Mario Bava and  Barbara Crampton. It's what led me to pursue a career in film and to start this blog.

So what the hell impressed me so much about this little slasher from 1996 that it shaped my entire life for two years and infinitely more to come?

Nipples.

I kid, I kid. But much like Rose McGowan's nipples, Scream is visually stimulating and rock solid. 

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? The 12 minute opening scene to Scream is, hands down, one of the most important and terrifying scenes in horror history. I could write an essay about this scene. In fact, I have. 

Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is home alone preparing to watch a video when she gets a call from a mysterious stranger. What at first seems to be an innocuous wrong number turns sour when the man on the other end threatens to gut her like a fish. Chastising her for shouting "Who's there?" when she hears a strange noise and challenging her to a deadly game of horror trivia, the stalker (Ghostface) reveals that Scream is no ordinary slasher flick.

Not only are the victims in Scream unusually crafty and clever, they're big horror fans. They've seen enough slasher movies to know what not to do when confronted with a masked serial killer, so they're well-equipped to fight back.

Rife with movie references both obvious (the kids watch Halloween at a party) and subtle (a line in the opening scene, "Drive down to the MacKenzies," is a direct reference to Halloween's final scene), Scream is the first widely successful "meta" horror film (although Wes Craven's New Nightmare, a meta masterpiece, came out two years earlier, it didn't find much of an audience until long after its release). 

The cinematic postmodern movement was just beginning and Scream's genre-savvy protagonists who are well aware that they are, in fact, characters in a movie pushed it over the edge. It spawned dozens of copycats and brought postmodernism to the mainstream. 

She must have just watched I Know What You Did Last Summer. Copycats, man.

So here we are with Drew Barrymore, the film's biggest star, fighting Ghostface in the very first scene. Audiences must have been surprised but nothing could have prepared them for her gruesome murder five minutes later. That's right, Scream pulled a Psycho. By killing off the major star early on, it made the audience feel like anything could happen.

No character is safe.

And that's just the first of Scream's masterstrokes.

The film shifts focus to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a spunky brunette whose mother was brutally raped and murdered one year earlier. This has left her with some real intimacy issues much to the dismay of her horny boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). Although characters in the film keep insisting that he's hot and the perfect guy, I have a hard time believing them considering that he looks like this.

I dunno. Maybe it's a 90's thing. But I'm pretty sure the name for this look is "raccoon bassist."

And although this isn't your typical slasher, so every character is more important than just being considered Meat, it's time to Meet them anyway. There's Sidney's best friend Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan), the feisty hot blonde; her boyfriend Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), an obnoxious bumbling oaf; and Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), a sarcastic video store employee who's obsessed with horror.

There's also Tatum's brother Dewey (David Arquette), her older brother who is a newly minted police deputy and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), a trashy TV journalist who would be willing to stab her own grandmother in the back for a great scoop.

Just within the confines of this list, two of the most important elements of the Scream franchise are displayed. First is that the adult storylines are given just as much weight as those of the teenagers (Dewey and Gale's interactions are a major plot thread), which is highly unusual for a slasher film. Usually they prefer to focus on the young pretty starlets as they line up for the slaughter.

Second is that no death in the film is tossed off. Every character has an important influence on the plot and a rapport with the audience. Whenever Ghostface knocks off another victim, we know their personality, backstory, and regret their passing. This is the key to making effective horror and Craven has long since learned his stuff.

All of this is indicated in the fact that each character has a specific last name. I bring this up in my Wes Craven essay, but most slasher films prefer to have their characters listed as "Billy" or "Stu" or "Randy." This way they're just meat and their deaths have no consequence. But Craven wants you to feel it hard when he slices and dices.

Also the last names are a handy way to link them to their families, family being a key theme of this suburban slasher. Throughout the plot Sidney learns the secrets that her mother has been hiding from her - secrets that have been bringing danger down on her daughter's head. Craven has made a career off of the dark corners of idyllic suburbia and Scream is no different. By displaying a "perfect" nuclear family life ripped at the seams, the film has much more thematic resonance than the typical slice and dice flick.

Also there's a brunette protagonist. Don't scoff, this is a big deal.

Although Scream is by no means a perfect film, it stands tall on the backs of a cavalcade of masters of the field. Craven is a consistently intelligent and creative director and imbues the film with his personal stamp of elegant visual compositions. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson expertly balances the comedy and horror elements in a never-before-seen style that brings the movie a lively spark. 

His tradition of writing overly eloquent dialogue for high school students as they deconstruct genre clichés (also seen in Dawson's Creek and Halloween: H20) works at its absolute best here in the hands of a capable cast. And composer Marco Beltrami's score takes Western influences to give an unexpected jolt to the typical horror score.

And the acting is unusually solid across the board - you can tell they're having fun and a lot of the best comic moments are tiny improvised details that arose naturally from the script as interpreted by a talented and dedicated troupe of young actors. Cox and Arquette have great chemistry (although the amount of acting in that regard is suspect), with her reveling in a delightfully bitchy character and him turning in a career-best performance as a young officer of the law trying to prove himself.

And all the kids are game, although Matthew Lillard displays the best comic aptitude with pitch perfect line deliveries peppered throughout the film.

He's literally the most obnoxious character put to celluloid but you can't not love him.

Although I have long posited that there is no good story that can't be told in 90 minutes, I welcome Scream's nearly two hour run time with open arms. There are very few slashers that deserve this distinction, but Scream isn't your typical film. Not only is it an excellent horror comedy, it's also a whodunit.

As the cast is picked off one by one, the central mystery of the film is that of who is behind the mask (which would quickly become a Halloween icon). I won't spoil it here, but that mystery is given one of the most unique and unexpected solutions in a manner that is totally supported by the previous events of the film and completely satisfying.

Usually the end of a slasher film with an unknown antagonist is anticlimactic. Either it's some character who hasn't been onscreen once until the big reveal (Friday the 13th) or the killer is someone we could never possibly have guessed because the script never gave them any possible motive (Memorial Day). It's no fun when the big reveal isn't one of our possible suspects (or at least a character that we know well).

Ghostface in the garage with a candlestick!

Scream manages to avoid all of those pitfalls yet still be a fresh and enticing mystery movie that plays on our knowledge of genre conventions to keep us guessing until the very end. And that infinitely compelling framework is why I will allow it to exceed the typical approved slasher length.

And it does this all without having a single actress take her top off. And the gore scenes are pretty great but couldn't quite make it through the MPAA filters intact. So this is a slasher with no boobs and a medium amount of gore that is still great because the people making it knew that storytelling is what will keep an audience interested.

This is why we should keep hiring geniuses. A slasher could have buckets of blood but still be a piece of boring cardboard without a strong story. Craven knows this and I thank him for being a genius.

On the strength of its incredible story, Scream overcomes all of its obstacles, of which there are few. I mean, there's a couple dubbing issues here and there. Maybe the later deaths could have included more genre satire. There's some weird unscary daylight moments in the middle ten minutes. And there is one joke that falls entirely flat (A "Wes Carpenter" reference that makes no sense in a movie that acknowledges the existence of other horror films. Wes Carpenter is not a real person. Yeah, I get the joke but it makes no sense considering that every other director or actor mentioned in the film is 100% nonfiction).

But one joke isn't enough to kill a solid comedy and one silly moment isn't enough to kill a classic horror film.

Scream created an icon in Ghostface, led the postmodern revolution, and revitalized the entire suffering slasher genre, which still carries on in spurts and starts to this day. It's entirely original and works within the tropes of the genre to create a new entity that is entirely alive and beautiful.

Scream is one of those few smart movies that hit it big and we have Wes Craven to thank for that. This film is just another brick in my argument that the horror genre has weight in cinema. It's often looked down upon, but under the guiding hand of a talented auteur, horror can be just as important and game changing as any other genre.

So keep screaming. I know I will.

Killer: Ghostface (voiced by Roger Jackson)

Final Girl: Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell)

Best Kill: Tatum gets stuck in the doggy door as the garage opens, crushing her nipples neck.

But really though.

Sign of the Times: Sidney has an Indigo Girls poster in her bedroom; People are shocked that Billy has a "cellular phone."

Scariest Moment: The opening scene.

Weirdest Moment: Ghostface stalks Sidney and Tatum in a grocery store.

Champion Dialogue: "I'm the one who's been selfish and self absorbed with all this post-traumatic stress."

Body Count: 7

1. Steve is gutted with a hunting knife.
2. Casey is gutted and hung from a tree.
3. Principal Himbry is stabbed, gutted, and hung from a goal post. 
4. Tatum is crushed in a garage door cat flap.
5. Kenny's throat is slit.
6. [Stu has a TV dropped on his head.]
7. [Billy is impaled with an umbrella and shot twice.] 

TL;DR: Scream is a witty and scary horror comedy that changed the game forever.

Rating: 10/10

Word Count: 2342

Reviews In This Series

Scream (Craven, 1996)

Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)

Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)

Scream 4 (Craven, 2011)