SCREAM
1/2
WenQing
Directed by : Wes Craven
Written by : Kevin Williamson
Principal Cast : Neve Campbell (Sidney), Skeet Ulrich (Billy), Matthew Lillard (Stuart), Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers), Rose McGowan (Tatum), Jamie Kennedy (Randy)
Produced by : Dimension Films
Length : 104 minutes
Rating : *** 1/2
Theatres : Cathay Cinemas
All things considered, SCREAM is really quite good. There's an adequate (an understatement) amount of blood, gore, and unsavoury gutting and on-screen killing. There's also plenty of shock value (at least the preview audience seemed to find mountains of it, screaming at every relevant juncture), but it wasn't too scary (for desensitised me anyway).
SCREAM is really about Sidney Prescott -- played by Neve Campbell who seems to have a "Party of Five" hangover (especially the crying scenes and snatches of teen angst) -- her boyfriend Billy, and a killer in the town dressed as the Grim Reaper. Sidney i s a disturbed teenager whose mother was raped and murdered brutally a year before. Her boyfriend Billy is suspected to be the blade-happy killer, and the plot goes from a cameo Drew Barrymore being slaughtered (and hung from a tree with all her insides da ngling from her stomach) in the first few minutes, to a festival of killings in the protracted finale, with practically all the teens in town boozing and watching horror movies all night in Stuart's house (and getting picked off one by one of course). The re's also an attached plot of Gale Weathers, a reporter bent on covering the sensational series of killings (she wrote a book about the murder of Sidney's mom a year ago... so you can guess Sidney doesn't like her much), which sneakily plugs Courteney Cox into the centre of the movie with Campbell and Ulrich.
What makes SCREAM just that little bit more flashy is the irreverent respect it has for the horror-slasher-epic genre it's swimming in. Sidney sums it up aptly, saying horror movies are "all the same... some big-breasted blonde who can't act" getting her self directly in harm's way like a moth to a flame. SCREAM takes all the conventions made popular and easily identifiable by horror "classics" like HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH (and of course Craven's own A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) and twists them into a freaky homage to all these slasher epics. Some characters in SCREAM are self-referential, expounding on how they must be in "one great big movie," and how each event is reminiscent of a horror flick convention. The centre of this revelation is Jamie Kenn edy's character Randy (who works in a video store... echoes of Tarantino?) who declares that there are three basic rules to surviving a horror flick, striking home with deadly wit, comic effect and aplomb : never have sex (virgins always live through the movie), never drink alcohol, and never say: "I'll be right back" (because surely they never will).
The special thing about SCREAM is that it never descends into becoming just a plain silly self-effacing film... even as Randy describes each golden rule of horror films, they are being broken with grisly results. It's almost a sophisticated satire of the genre (almost- but that bit tacky because the conclusion to SCREAM is a little bit of a cop-out), yet maintaining the balance of the thriller so as to keep the action compelling, and the shocks stinging enough to be effective.
Even though convincing acting is rarely a part of horror flicks, SCREAM has quite a good cast. There are stand-out performances (within the dramatic restrictions of a horror film!) from Rose McGowan and Jamie Kennedy, both of whom are quite likeable and fun to watch. There's also Matthew Lillard (HACKERS) who is just plain crazy in SCREAM, and who is more convincing as an unadulterated nutcase (read : acts weird for no apparent reason) than Courteney Cox and Neve Campbell as dramatic leads put together.
But there were some problems I had with SCREAM. While it was altogether an enjoyable movie, with lots of twists and turns as to the identity of the killer, and really suspenseful action sequences (kudos to Craven), there are several weaknesses I could no t blink away. Somehow, I can't forget the disturbing fear that Freddy Kreuger represented in the original NIGHTMARE (before he became the over-used and very visible clown in the NIGHTMARE sequels). In SCREAM our Grim Reaper is not supernatural (fair enoug h, just plain human), but so very human that his victims consistently punch and kick him where it hurts (so he groans in pain) and they close doors on his arms (and he can't get in because he's just a human being anyway). Somehow, the killer's humanity be comes the undoing of how much we fear him. Similarly, the body count is spectacular, and the killings on screen so explicit (with the censors having a field day with the early gutting scene) that desensitising me was just another blood-bath away. There wa s too much carnage to really turn the killer's work into an anomaly in the normal life of common teens, the anomaly that forms the basis of fear- the unknown and uncertain unnaturalness of things.
These two things (including the cop-out ending which I can't reveal because it would spoil the ride) made the killer too ordinary and the grisly murders so commonplace that SCREAM became a flashy, clever gimmick of a flick. It was a thriller with a witty and comic twist in its in-joke treatment of the horror film genre, plenty of style in execution, but somehow lacking the convincing element of fear that made the original NIGHTMARE outstanding (except for its own strangely incongruous ending after the eff ective build up).
All in all, SCREAM comes across as very competent and quite smart. Not very scary but lots of shocks and gore to compensate. Craven is finding a new way to make his horror films, but SCREAM is as far as this self-referential sub-genre can go. I gave SCRE AM lots of stars because it's done better than any horror flick I've seen in the past 5 years (I've even caught TCS' "Tuesdays After Dark" features and its precursor "Terrifying Tuesdays" quite avidly). SCREAM's not perfect but it's really quite good.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
Wen-Qing hopes humanity will realise that Courteney Cox is still one of TV's "Misfits of Science"
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