H ow terribly postmodern of you, Wes! With Scream , director Wes Craven has created a film wrapped entirely in quotation marks, delighting in an ironic appreciation of the camp. Art imitates art in this comically self-conscious homage to the slasher films of the 70s and 80s. Scream runs like a greatest hits album, borrowing the most salient (I hesitate to call them the best) elements from seminal horror films like Halloween and Friday the Thirteenth . Michael Meyers, Jason Vorhees, and even specters of Norman Bates appear in a killer who dresses to kill in a long black robe and mask, and thinks a little too fondly of his mother. The victims consist entirely of drinking and whoring teenagers who get punished for their evil ways. And the heroine who saves the day is an innocent (almost) virgin.
With films like The Serpent and the Rainbow and Nightmare on Elm Street to his credit, director Wes Craven seemed likely to resuscitate the tired formula of Hollywood horror films. But Scream does not simply mimic the sensationalized violence and obvious misogyny of a genre that forever recycles phallus-wielding psychopaths and parades of big-breasted victims. Craven acknowledges the triteness of such slasher films--he even seems to revel in the very awfulness of his own past projects.
But a little cleverness does not a good film make. So caught up is Craven in his own self-mockery that he fails to acknowledge the darker side of his film. The parodies of horror movies obscure the fact that Scream is a film about violence and death. Now that may seem too obvious to mention, except that Craven would have us believe that Scream is a film only about horror films. The deceptive nature of the film undermines the viewer's critical faculties, for it is difficult indeed to object to a film itself that does nothing substantial but mock other films.
From the very first scene, Scream is a film proud--albeit mockingly so--of its roots. The film opens with a shot of Drew Barrymore, emblem of celebrity excess and victim of Hollywood expectations, perfectly cast as the killer's initial quarry. In the grand spirit of unsuspecting victims, the blonde Casey (Barrymore) pertly chats with an anonymous caller until his questions become ever more threatening. He finally makes his murderous intentions clear, but grants her a single chance for survival: if she can answer a "simple" question, he will leave her alone. A killer well versed in his cinematic predecessors, he asks her to identify the murderer in Friday the Thirteenth Part One . Alas, Casey proves herself a horror film illiterate and meets her gruesome end.
Thus Scream announces itself as very much a horror film, and a good one at that (I did scream, as advertised). But never so vain as to take all the credit, Scream provides ample footnotes. The killer's melting-face mask is a hybrid of the hockey mask Jason wears in Friday the Thirteenth and the plastic, indiscernible features of Michael Meyers in Halloween . The repeated stabs of a kitchen knife shot from different angles come from none other than the shower scene of Psycho .
At a glance, Scream varies little from that perennial theme of its genre: the psychotic killer with a taste for hunting knives and the attractive victim alone in the big old house appear as they ought to in any proper horror film. But lest you forget that this is hardly a stock-"B" film, Craven announces throughout the film that Scream is a terribly clever meta-horror movie. Thus all those staple motifs of the slasher films appear with a jaunty little twist.
Friday the Thirteenth , Halloween , Nightmare on Elm Street , and Texas Chain Saw Massacre celebrate the Cult of the Virgin. Naughty girls die quickly, often caught in the very act, while a less dissolute girl always lives to tell the tale. The virgin Laurie, played by slasher film icon Jamie Lee Curtis, survives Halloween because she remains undistracted by matters that prove fatal to her over-sexed friends. Yet Craven grants clemency to Scream 's heroine Sidney, played by Neve Campbell, who survives in spite of her concessions to a long-suffering boyfriend.
The murder of overtly sexualized women constitutes a violation that substitutes for an impossible rape. With obvious phallic imagery, the killer vents an impotent rage by penetrating his victim with an ax, a sharp knife, or a chainsaw. Like Jason to Mrs. Vorhees, or Norman to Mrs. Bates, the killer of slasher films remains forever devoted to his mother. He cannot imagine sex with another woman, so he eliminates his frustration by eliminating the embodiment of his inadequacies. The masked murderer of Scream would be much like his Oedipal forefathers, were it not for a potency that Craven so wickedly supplies. In fact, the killer now seems a bit confused by his newfound virility: he rapes Sidney's mother rather than his own.
Imagine Henry Winkler on anything larger than a twelve inch set and the rarity of former TV stars' Hollywood success no longer seems a mystery. Winkler will never escape his days of leather jackets, chicks and drive-in movies as the greaser with a heart of gold on the sitcom Happy Days . Yet Craven nonetheless lifts a twenty-year moratorium on the Fonz to cast him as the decidedly unrebellious, tough-but-fair high school principal of Scream .
Celebrity Barrymore's early death seems to imply that there will be no superstars in this film. Instead, TV stars galore accompany Winkler in this Cast of the Vaguely Familiar. With the same gleeful self-mockery that runs through this film, sitcom demigods ape their on-screen personae and delight in their own notoriety. Neve Campbell, the bratty older sister of Party of Five , plays Sidney, the bratty heroine of Scream . And Courtney Cox of that most popular show Friends once again gluts herself on the media limelight as the upwardly mobile ex-weather bunny cum TV journalist Gale Weathers.
A cabal of actors both infamous and just plain bad, Campbell and her pals capture horror films' cliches of teenage angst with delightfully overweening performances. The guys exhibit an exaggerated bravado heretofore unknown, while the girls coyly exploit a newfound power of seduction.
Cast and director of Scream ultimately impress the viewer with how terribly hard they must work to achieve a class of awfulness that films like Friday the Thirteenth and Halloween seem so naturally to attain.
And yet, I find a certain joy in appreciating the truly terrible. There is a sense of clever whimsy and self-righteousness that accompanies a tongue-in-cheek fancy for kitsch. Finding value in the obscure or maligned provides an easily-accessible individuality: "I am the only one who truly understands " begins the exposition on some ill-rated cultural artifact. Scream hardly invents this regard for the undeniably dreadful. Rather, there exists a whole culture of kitsch propagated by those who make Urban Outfitters their Mecca and Tori Spelling their high priestess.
Kitsch provides an alternative form of sophistication, easily accessible and wholly corrupt. Yet before you attack my snobbism, allow me to temper this declaration. I do not simply prescribe High Culture; Nietzsche is not an antidote for Danielle Steele. What I object to is not a lack of erudition, but a lack of sincerity. Along with four-inch platform shoes and a fondness for The Dukes of Hazard , Scream praises through a blend of nostalgia and contempt. I cannot really believe that the horror movies of the 70's and 80's, truly the bellbottoms of modern cinema, invite anything more than a tongue-in-cheek respect. So obvious are the shortcomings of these best-forgotten relics that any contemporary revival suggests to me a sort of trite and uncritical narcissism. It seems the only things that garner praise must be shallow and easily mocked.
Fortunately for us, bell bottoms were never meant to be taken seriously. Thus the Brady's would-be colonization of our wardrobe hardly impedes further consideration of an important set of concerns. Not so of the glib celebration of horror films. As a whimsical sort of parody, Scream makes the viewer complicit in a campy, yet nonetheless callous, appreciation of violence. So absurd is the plot, so glaring are the clichés, that the film in fact invites the contempt of the viewer, while at the same time precluding empathy with the actors. Scream's satirical style creates a sort of self-righteous complicity between film maker and audience. I know, as does Wes, what silly and predictable drivel it all is. Good prevails over evil, the killer gets his come-uppance, and the heroine lives to tell the tale. Laughing at the trite genre of horror films makes it very difficult to, at the same time, object to the misogyny and horrible violence this type of movie presents.
I know very well how difficult it is to sustain any objections to jaded bloodshed disguised in parody. But lest my glib account of this "awfulness" lead you to a lukewarm impression of Scream , allow me to formally state: I loved this movie! I loved the crass and obvious references to other horror films. I loved the surprise ending (something I am far too sportsmanlike to mention here). And I loved the revival of the mother-obsessed murderer, who now appears the very portrait of existential horror when he dons a mask reminiscent of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream .