Scream 4

Perhaps I should open this with a disclaimer; most people are shocked when I say this, but the Scream franchise is my favorite horror franchise and I’ve seen every one of the films in the series – I count Scream itself as a film that has one of the biggest influences on my path as an artist. So, when I tell you that I greatly enjoyed Scream 4 you’ll understand that while I’m slightly biased to like the film, I come from a background that actually understands and loves what Craven & Williamson have done to the genre with the franchise.

There has been what I think is an unjust amount of critic hate for Scream 4; frankly, when your original film is incredibly strong, even ground-breaking for the genre any film that follows it is going to be harshly judged and people will be looking for chinks in the armor with each passing film – so by the time you get to number 4 many people are going to be going into the theatre expecting to be disappointed. I was not disappointed.

While I think Scream 4 suffers some from having the inevitable weight of 3 previous films on its shoulders, it plays very well at its new concept and keeps it scary; in a day of horror reboots and remakes, the Ghost Face killer has decided to create a real life reboot and the cast of victims even resemble the victims of Billy & Stew’s original killings. This is a new generation that Sydney, Dewey & Gale must combat – one that has turned the horror story of their life into a parody, spends 24/7 updating each other on their lives and blames Sydney for turning their town into a living horror story. To them the original Woodsboro murders are a joke until the masked killer begins to come after them.

Craven and Williamson play beautifully with the horror clichés that have e3xisted for years as well as the ones they changed in the original Scream making Scream 4 one of the most reflexive films I’ve ever seen. I do have to say that my personal favorite moment in the film would probably be the conversation two of the characters have in the opening film about how horror films now aren’t scary, just gory – something Craven has refused to do in this film. He’s made a film that has jumps, screams and mystery – it’s actually scary.

If you haven’t jumped on the Scream wagon with the original films, I doubt you’re going to with Scream 4; but if you’re a fan of the originals, or want to be, Scream 4 is a fun ride.

Scream 2

sdcc wes craven 1
Originally uploaded by April A. Taylor

As if the first Scream weren’t reflexive enough, Scream 2 came around and suddenly instead of verbally making fun of the movies on which it is based, Kevin Williamson made the new tale center around the movie within the movie, Stab based on the Woodsboro killings from the original film. It’s a brilliant bit of writing and probably why I love this movie so much – it’s a movie about movies and Scream is the only horror franchise I can think of right off hand that is about the movies.

Wes Craven may be pigeon-holed into the horror genre but the man is a master at it. One of the reasons I love the Scream franchise is that the jumps and bumps are based on actual thrills and suspense that works, not gore and cheap tricks; the characters are also human and their struggles just real enough to put you in their shoes. While Kevin Williamson deserves a decent share in that credit, his scripts could have been completely butchered if it weren’t for the artful hand of Craven.

You may not be aware that Scream 4 is in production as I type this. The Craven/Williamson pairing is reuniting again and I can’t wait to see what new rules the characters will face now that their personal horror stories turned from a trilogy to a franchise. I for one can’t wait to see, and I hope desperately the studio does not force them into the horror movie killer – a PG-13 rating.

Mickey: Come on Randy, with all due respect, the killer obvious patterned himself after two serial killers who have been immortalized on film.
Film Class Guy: Thank you!
Teacher: Are you suggesting that someone's trying to make a real life sequel?
Randy: "Stab 2"? Who'd want to do that? Sequels suck!

Scream 2

Adjusting to life post-Woodsboro Sidney Prescott is safe and happy as a theatre major at Windsor College; her life has now escaped feeling like a horror movie and is about to be committed to the horror movie genre literally. Gale Weathers wrote a follow up book to her torrid tale about Maureen Prescott’s murder telling the tale of the Woodsboro murders and it is being turned into the latest and greatest slasher movie – Stab. Sidney prepares for the release of the film and the worst time of her life to be rehashed in a melodramatic teen horror movie until the killer returns and it becomes apparent that the killer too is obsessed with sequels and he wants to recreate the Woodsboro murders.

While I cannot definitively say which of the first two Scream films is my favorite I do have to say that for just a pure, fun watch I adore Scream 2. In Scream 2 the movie about a movie factor is heightened, the sequel cliché’s are played to a T and the college campus setting is a way to inject yet more youthful arrogance into the mix and allow for a much larger body count with very little effort.

Perhaps my favorite joke in all of the Scream series is Stab the movie. Stab is not only pulls directly from the characters conversations in Scream but the name Stab is a direct reference to the name of the movie. My favorite joke about Stab is that in Scream Sidney worries that if her life were made into a movie she would be played by Tori Spelling, and in Stab Spelling is the actress that lands the role of young Sidney. The irony and tongue-in-cheek humor is readily apparent and fabulous.

All of the Scream films were made while Courtney Cox was on Friends and Scream 2 decides to use the popularity of Friends (and Cox’s good standing with the cast) to throw in a few subtle references to her Friends co-stars. At one point we find out that Dewey was played in Stab by David Schwimmer and Gale tells of naked photos of her on the internet were her head on Jennifer Anniston’s body. The jokes work on their own, but if you are aware of Cox’s connection to Friends they play even better.

As someone who went to film school, the fact that Randy is a film student is absolutely fabulous to me. Randy and Mickey the rival film students are my kind of geeks and their opinions make me laugh.

In the end I cannot separate my love for Scream from my love for Scream 2. Both movies are fabulous thrillers in their own right and Scream 2 is a great sequel that lives up to its predecessor while managing to feel like its own film with its own set of rules.

Director: Wes Craven
Writer: Kevin Williamson
Sidney Prescott: Neve Campbell
Gale Weathers: Courtney Cox
Dewey Riley: David Arquette
Randy Meeks: Jamie Kennedy
Derek: Jerry O’Connell
Mickey: Timothy Olyphant
Cotton Weary: Liev Schreiber
Debbie Salt: Laurie Metcalf
Hallie: Elise Neal
CiCi: Sarah Michelle Gellar
Maureen: Jada Pinkett Smith
Sorority Sister Murphy: Portia de Rossi
Stab Casey: Heather Graham
Stab Sidney: Tori Spelling
Stab Billy: Luke Wilson

Mickey: Oh come on Randy, with all due respect, the killer obvious patterned himself after two serial killers who were immortalized on film.
Guy #2: Thank you!
Film Teacher: So, you're saying that someone is trying to make a real life sequel?
Randy: Stab 2? Why would anyone want to do that? Sequels suck!

Scream

Scream is perhaps one of the single most intelligent films to come out in the last decade. You might want to argue that point with me but my point is not that Scream is an intellectual film, but that it is a film that operates on so many levels it can’t be considered just a teen slasher movie. Sure, Scream is a teen slasher movie, but it’s also a genuine horror film, a satire, a movie about movies, a comedy and more than anything a damn good mystery. In an era that was seeing more and more cliché’s in the horror genre Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven decided to use the horror cliché mire to their advantage and play on those cliché’s instead of falling in with them. By doing so they created a franchise that dissimilar to anything else to date.

I am not going to write about all of the influences on Scream here, or even everything it references because if you really appreciate the major films of the genre you will without a doubt discover more and more hidden inside Scream on every viewing. The film is a veritable hodgepodge of hidden nuggets about other films and filmmakers and the reason the film has aged so well is because it manages to do this and still put an emphasis on the characters instead of putting the emphasis on the references.

For those that haven’t seen Scream it takes place in the small town of Woodsboro where Sidney Presscott’s life has been hell for a year; the previous fall her mother was murdered and she was the star witness in putting the killer away. Now as the anniversary of her mother’s death approaches people are dying again and Sidney must contend with the thought that perhaps these murders are connected to her mother and the fact that it appears the killer is after her. Everyone in Sidney’s life is now a suspect and Sidney’s friends don’t see the danger in the killings, simply the rewards of being let out of school.

This is perhaps the first Wes Craven film that I had ever seen; I have the appreciation I do for the (better films of the) horror genre because of Wes Craven. Before I saw Scream I thought that horror films were basically evil tools of the devil without any redeeming qualities. Once I saw Scream I began to realize that perhaps some horror movies were worth the watch. One of the most influential things about Scream is that it helped to revive the decaying genre. Somehow by poking fun at the cliché’s it helped refresh the entire thing and poured in new ideas, or at least made studios willing to take a chance on films that they might not have before. I do think that Scream is one of the most influential films to come out of the 1990’s.

Director: Wes Craven
Writer: Kevin Williamson
Sidney Prescott: Neve Campbell
Dewey Riley: David Arquette
Gale Weathers: Courtney Cox
Billy Loomis: Skeet Ulrich
Tatum Riley: Rose McGowan
Stuart Macher: Matthew Lillard
Randy Meeks: Jamie Kennedy
Casey Becker: Drew Barrymore
Cotton Weary: Liev Schreiber
Principal Himbry: Henry Winkler

Casey: Who's there?
Ghostface: Never say "who's there?" Don't you watch scary movies? It's a death wish. You might as well come out to investigate a strange noise or something.

Friday the 13th

mrs. voorhees
Originally uploaded by hypostylin

If you don’t want to know the end of Friday the 13th don’t read this. I cannot discuss this film without discussing the end in detail. It wouldn’t do the film justice any other way.

I didn’t have the typical lack of knowledge most people do going into Friday the 13th; I knew the ending. How? I’ve seen Scream. Anyone that has seen the first 15 minutes of Scream knows the real ending of the film – the killer asks Drew Barrymore who the killer in Friday the 13th is and she gets is wrong. Thus she dies. From that moment on I knew that Jason was not the killer in the first Friday the 13th, but I didn’t understand. Everyone knows Jason is the killer in the hockey mask that haunts those films.

However, this knowledge did not turn me off of the film. It is the ending of Friday the 13th that makes the film worth watching – the ending is one of the most unique in the genre.

On the whole Friday the 13th is your average slasher film, I would argue that it is the start of the contemporary slasher film. A bunch of kids (including a young Kevin Bacon) go to be counselors at a quaint camp with a bloody history and in one night are picked off one by one. There are some really good scares and jump moments, but for the most part the body of the movie is really standard. The kids flirt, do drugs, have intercourse, and get slowly picked off one by one.

To tell the truth, with the exception of Kevin Bacon’s death I pretty much found the movie kind of boring – but then came the ending.

In the end Alice is the only counselor left alive and she sees a jeep drive up and Mrs. Voorhees gets out and offers to help Alice…but as it turns out Mrs. Voorhees used to work at the camp, and her son Jason drowned there. She blames the counselors for not watching him so in 1958 (the year after Jason drowned) she killed two of the counselors and the camp closed. She was never caught and when Mrs. Voorhees found out Camp Crystal Lake was reopening she decided to go after the counselors again.

The ending makes the movie. If it weren’t for the twist that the killer is not some typical psycho in a costume the first Friday the 13th would be a mere blip on the radar; however, Mrs. Voorhees, the vengeful mother makes the film unique and more than memorable.

There is a remake in the works for Friday the 13th and rumor has it that Mrs. Voorhees is out and Jason is in. I haven’t seen the second film yet to know how Jason works into the plot (because he drowned in 1958), but I heavily protest Mrs. Voorhees being totally taken out of the remake – she makes the film and makes it something worth seeing.

Director: Sean S. Cunningham
Writer: Victor Miller
Mrs. Voorhees: Betsy Palmer
Alice: Adrienne King
Marcie: Jeannine Taylor
Annie: Robbi Morgan
Jack: Kevin Bacon
Bill: Harry Crosby
Brenda: Laurie Bartram
Ned: Mark Nelson
Steve Christy: Peter Brouwer
Crazy Ralph: Walt Gorney
Barry: Willie Adams
Claudette: Debra S. Hayes
Trudy: Dorothy Kobs
Sandy: Sally Anne Golden
Jason: Ari Lehman

Pamela Voorhees: Did you know a young boy drowned the year before those two others were killed? The counselors weren't paying any attention... They were making love while that young boy drowned. His name was Jason. I was working the day that it happened. Preparing meals... here. I was the cook. Jason should've been watched. Every minute. He was... He wasn't a very good swimmer. We can go now... dear.