Scream

In honor of Ghostface being added to Mortal Kombat 1 I decided to rewatch this series from the beginning to review here (or maybe, I just needed an excuse to watch this series again). It’s a good thing too because I almost began to forget why exactly it was I have held this one unashamedly at a 10/10 for as long as I could rate movies, but was swiftly reminded by that killer opening. It’s not hard to see how this series with such a powerful opener featuring one of the best slasher design's ever, very intense realistic sounding build-up that expertly uses the idea of horror movies as a divider for all the other railroads of the scene to diverge across, chugging their spectacular elements along until the final minute where they all collide; the punchy realistic sound effects jabbing between a heart wrenching score, brutal performances capturing a lightning in a bottle moment of parental terror, constant camera movement that speaks to the scenes need to push the limits of tension, realistic practical effects, the phone creatively being used as a mental weapon just as their knife is used as a physical one, the flashing smash to black. It just works. It all just works. But beyond that I think the audience has become lost in what Scream’s intended skills & twists within the piles of internet theories, analysis, script variants & fan-fiction. This includes a key element which makes every ounce of this film endlessly iconic when other movies fail to do the same. That is action. Action. Action. Action. It drives a story & every single beat of horror as well as comedy relies on it. This movie never slows down. The character’s develop through action. The meta commentary is relayed through action. The scares are all about the action. The only thing which really ever directly explained is the killers plan at the end, but even that isn’t done in a way which entirely breaks down the psychology of the killer overtly. There are genuine discussions to be had for something like Stu actually being a bit remorseful/reluctant about the killings, the boys having been groomed a bit by Roman etc. which gives the film multiple contorting sides like a Rubik’s cube of morality & mystery. More than that there’s a very important balance here. The shit that really makes cinema shine. The mundane vs the horrific, the absurd vs the dead-pan. Every set of scenes is a one-two combo between a dual variable; the opening starts off a mundane conversation, becomes a horrific nightmare, then that scene pairs with the following: a mundane day at school introducing us to the cast. Shortly after we get a scene of Sydney at home after this long day where she’s attacked. A horrifying thing. Then Billy climbs through the window, get’s arrested & just like that we’re back to the emotional teenage drama. It makes me think that if Ghostface happened to be a real ghost you could sell this as a spin-off to Twin Peaks. It has all the same ingredients to how horror & comedy are done, as well as meta storytelling in regards to both the genre along with the medium at large. But people seem to forget that, taking things like Sydney’s iconic perfect existence quote at face value, then wind up feeling like the acting/dialogue is poor. It’s not. It functions like the curtains of a stage-play, constantly intermitting to remind you that you are in fact watching a work of fiction. A meta-fiction which wants you to think about the nature of horror stories not just clown on the tropes. In other words: why do these often nonsensical tropes exist? What do they stand to say & how can they be used if not overcome to make a more emotionally impactful story? Wes Craven tries to practice his answer, using tropes while abandoning & even eventing others but most of it goes unnoticed, just like that special blue TV. “What tv?” Exactly. Could’ve ended the review there but you know I’m not gonna leave you hanging like that: Wes Craven left the TV in Casey’s house on the dead screen between VHS tapes as a subtle signifier to the audience they’re watching a film. Stuff like this is just missing from the rest of the franchise, just like the rest of the visual-auditory sauce glazing this pinnacle of slasher potential. When will we get a Scream movie actually cleverly playing on tropes through highly stylized visual-auditory storytelling? I miss my lightning strike smash cut to black. I miss those kick ass dutch angles. I miss Ghostface tip-toeing around the set. I miss Ghostface actually playing mind games with the character. I miss the Ghostface’s actually being more than just charisma androids. I miss when Ghostface’s “incompetency” wasn’t a gimmick used to slow down a scene but rather momentum to build it up. I miss when who killed who actually mattered & told you a bit about a character. I miss when twists felt like more than just the who & why; Billy plays off the convention of red herring character’s, being so obviously a serial killer it hurts but by the way the events unfold he never could’ve accomplished this plan, unless he had help. However, assuming there is only one killer added how obvious his guilt is most the audience proceed to brush him off as too obvious. When he’s revealed as the killer to most it comes across as surprising, but truth is his reveal isn’t the twist. Not fully anyway. The real twist is Stu who, while sorta obvious to me, didn’t strike most as guilty because, again, most who had no idea what this franchise was or anything about where it would go assumed it was playing by normal slasher rules: one very mysterious extraordinarily capable man. No. Instead it was two teenagers way over their heads. Yet despite it all their reveals somehow not only makes more sense but says more than something like Norman Bates reveal in Psycho does. This scene is a mask-off moment for both the killers & commentary, flipping up the sign that reads: “hey, don’t you think these weird restraints are holding us back from doing something really creative?” It’s all endlessly brilliant to me. This isn’t everything either, subtext like it being revealed Billy was the one who specifically killed Casey through the parallel between shots of him about to lay down a stab. I’ve seen so many people do long division to figure this out when really the blue rose was right there the whole time. It’s stuff like that that just lets me know: yeah, this film is the shit. It deserves even more love than it already get’s.