director
Wes Craven
screenwriter
Kevin Williamson
producers
Cary Woods
Cathy Konrad
cinematographer
Mark Irwin
music
Marco Beltrami
editor
Patrick Lussier
cast
Neve Campbell (Sidney)
Skeet Ulrich (Billy)
Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers)
David Arquette (Deputy Dewey)
Rose McGowan (Tatum)
Matthew Lillard (Stu)
Jamie Kennedy (Randy)
Drew Barrymore (Casey)
Liev Schreiber (Cotton Weary)
Henry Winkler (Principal Himbry)
W. Earl Brown (Kenny)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 111m
u.s.
release: 12/20/96
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
site
other wes
craven films
reviewed on this website:
- cursed
- the hills have eyes
- last
house on the left
- red
eye
- scream
2
- scream
3
|
"This
isn't a movie," says heroine Sidney (Neve Campbell) midway
through Scream. "Of course it is," says
her boyfriend (Skeet Ulrich). "Everything is one big movie."
An exchange like that could destroy a lesser movie. But the people
in Scream know they're in a horror movie -- in fact, they've
seen all the movies that Scream copies, dissects, and
parodies. They know the "rules" (don't have sex, don't
go off alone), but they goof on the rules and promptly get killed
for it.
I'm surprised it took this long for a postmodern slasher movie
to be made (if you don't count outright parodies like Student
Bodies). Slasher movies, of course, were big in the early
'80s; we saw a hundred rip-offs of Friday the 13th, which
in turn ripped off the heavyweight champ, Halloween.
After a while, the slasher craze petered out. Then, in 1984,
came the movie that gave horror a new face -- A Nightmare
on Elm Street, directed by Wes Craven, who has now made Scream.
Is Scream a revolutionary horror breakthrough on the level
of Nightmare? I don't think so. But it is witty, tightly
structured, and often effective as a straight horror film. The
script, by Kevin Williamson, turns our I've-seen-it-all jadedness
against us. The teens in Scream laugh at horror videos,
yelling at the screen ("Turn around! Don't drop the knife!").
Then they go off and do the same stupid things they've been laughing
at. This conceit is nasty and plausible -- we're saying
the same things while we're watching the movie.
Scream faithfully reproduces every stock slasher cliché.
There's the Traumatic Anniversary: Sidney's mom was raped and
murdered a year ago. There's the Creepy Crank Caller. There's
the "Boo! It's Not the Killer!" seat-jumper (I lost
count of how often Craven uses this). There are enough red herrings
for five movies, including a touchy-feely, scissors-wielding
principal (Henry Winkler!), a dorky police deputy (David Arquette),
and a virginal horror-movie expert (Jamie Kennedy).
The killer, who goes around in a dime-store mask (like Halloween's
Michael Myers), taunts Sidney while her friends die around her.
She's being saved for last, like Jamie Lee Curtis. One nice twist
is that, unlike Curtis in Halloween, Sidney loses her
virginity -- and still survives. The script subverts and critiques
the Victorian morality of these movies, which (like most horror
stories) equate sex with violent death.
Neve Campbell, one of the appealing misfit witches in last spring's
surprise hit The
Craft, carries her first starring role gracefully. She
makes Sidney brave and smart but also convincingly haunted. It's
a performance to match Heather Langenkamp's in A Nightmare
on Elm Street. Craven's touch with the other actors is less
adept -- he lets Matthew Lillard (Serial
Mom), as a wacky teen geek, overact all over the place.
And Craven's dialogue scenes, as always, are as flat as Wyoming.
I'm a horror buff, so I enjoyed Scream, and I wish it
well; the genre needs a hit. Yet I suspect it's a movie for fans
only. If the horror genre is to recapture the public imagination,
it needs more than an in-joke movie. It needs new blood -- it
needs a new face. Where is the next Wes Craven? |
