Some Thoughts About Scream (1996)

Wes Craven’s Scream is one of those certified horror movie classics beloved by millions - including quite a few writers, friends, and filmmakers whose tastes I tend to trust - I never did get along with too well. Because it is such a classic beloved by many people with good taste, I do tend to try and get into the film every half a decade or so, and what better time for that attempt (again) shortly before the late sequel hits.

With this newest try, my opinion of the film has in so far improved that I don’t actually actively hate it anymore. My heavy dislike, I’ve realized, is not so much for Craven’s film itself, but for the legion of smug, “ironic” teen slashers that followed it – some of them scripted by Scream’s Kevin Williamson, to be sure.

It’s not that I’ve started to love the meta horror elements of the film at hand, mind you: I’m still of the opinion that the script doesn’t really do much more with slasher clichés than to point them out, not fulfilling all of them for sure, but usually not really replacing them with something I find terribly interesting or engaging. or haven’t seen in dozens of giallos done with more style. There’s a sense of smug self-satisfaction running through this arm of horror as a whole I’m never going to become fond of, particularly when this smugness isn’t grounded in as much intelligence as the pose suggests, and never seems to rise above mere cleverness.

In Scream’s specific case, I’m also not at all fond of the final reveal of the killer as a couple of mad people clichés in desperate need of an attic. The film does its very best to make them act as stupidly as possible, so as to make a viewer really work at getting to believe these stupid pricks are criminal masterminds who have managed to fake a couple of murders before (and yes, I know what the later films do about this problem, but there’s no hint on screen that’s something Williamson and Craven were already planning here). Which is not helped by the acting of our villain actors in the final scene, which is so broad as to border on the offensive.

To be fair to the Williamson’s script, the killers’ earlier scenes work excellently when you already know whodunnit, adding a macabre dimension to these interactions on a re-watch, while also playing fair with the audience, something that’s certainly difficult to achieve if you don’t want the genre-savvy viewer to cop to the killers’ identity early on.

The serious – or semi-funny – thriller and murder set pieces still don’t get me as excited as they do my peers and imaginary enemies, alas. It’s not that I find any of them uninteresting, incompetently done or anything else that would make my opinion spectacularly irritating to true fans of the film (and more power to you) – I just don’t find them anything more than slick and competent, following classic suspense models well, but adding little stylistically or thematically that I find particularly involving. But then, I’ve never shared the admiration for Wes Craven as a director, either, so take that for what you will.

But hey, perhaps I’ll change my mind about all of this in the 2030s, when my next attempt at a re-watch is going to be due. Until then, I rather re-watch Scream 2 again, the one film in the franchise I genuinely love.