Skip to main content

Scream (1996) - Williamson Dialogue Hasn't Always Aged Well, Though Iconic All the Same

 


My mom grew up among the slasher golden era of the 80s, so she adored the genre and many of the 2000+ VHS tapes she had around for a lot of my childhood were various slasher franchises and what we didn’t have by 7 or 8 I was begging my parents to rent for me from Hollywood Video or Movie Starz on a regular basis. So it goes without saying that Scream coming in and revitalizing the entire genre’s popularity for a handful of years was a big deal in our household and I was probably very young the first time I saw it which was likely not long after it came out on tape in probably ‘97, same with the sequels in later years. I then proceeded to watch it so many times across my childhood well into adulthood that practically every line and scene and even delivery are memorized at that point, which made stepping back to write as objective a review as I can somewhat difficult but I found the more of a critical eye I applied to it the more it worked out.

As always starting with the negatives, the worst thing I can say about the movie is that it is VERY Kevin Williamson. Sometimes that means genuinely clever lines and plot twists, but sometimes that means being convinced that any pop culture reference or cultural commentary you have to offer is wildly clever and insightful and hilarious but instead it makes your teenage characters seem incredibly fake and stilted and like you’ve watched too many Tarantino movies. It is incredibly 90s and the longer the film went on, the more cringe some of the “post-modern” or “self-referential” dialogue really becomes and it is easily the most dated thing about this film other than the cell phones. When this is coupled with Wes Craven’s career long tendency to play even black comedy as pretty big and broad in his work, it can render characters and situations as almost cartoonish in their presentation, and several of the legitimate supporting characters like Stu (until the climax where he gives arguably the best performance in the entire film), Dewey, and Randy feeling like over-the-top sketches instead of living, breathing characters sometimes.

However, it is obvious upon any watch why this film became such a cultural phenomenon in the 90s that it sort of relaunched slashers as a viable mainstream genre for a while. The opening scene which is just absolutely perfect from casting to setting to atmosphere and one of the greatest pieces of horror cinema ever made. The many iconic scenes and lines from start to finish that would become deeply cemented in the mind of horror fans even if we didn’t have the likes of Scary Movie and awards show skits that rammed them even further into the pop culture cloud. The obvious, vocal love of slasher history and lore that is so deeply ingrained in everything that happens. The more real-feeling danger of bored suburban sociopaths with a cell phone that is as true now as it was in ‘96 when the film was coming during the second serial killer boom of the early to mid 90s. The very brutal attacks which purposefully avoid the highly creative kills of the 80s for something that felt a little more, well, Gainesville Ripper. An absolutely expert cast that only ever plays it as broad as Wes asks them too and can sell the drama and often hack writing, a who’s who of up and coming young actors and actresses of that time and also for some reason Jamie Kennedy.

It is perhaps the best directed film in Wes Craven’s filmography, nothing is out of place, everything is fully thought through, the locations are entirely realized and the cast is giving their a-game. I’m a huge Wes Craven fan, so this is indeed high praise coming from me who considers numerous Craven films better overall than Scream despite its significance in my life. The score by a composer who’d later get a couple of Oscar noms is fantastic, totally capturing the feel of a 70s or 80s slasher score while also being a little more classic AND a little more modern with a Nick Cave needle drop that’d later recur in many of the sequels as the unofficial theme song for the series. The effects had one terrible head squish but managed to effectively balance brutal reality with aiming for a more mainstream audience than gorehounds like me which is a move I can respect cause it really paid off.

I thought it’d be a lot more difficult than it actually ended up being breaking down what does and doesn’t work in this classic film. Nothing I’m gonna say is gonna keep anybody from watching it, and you probably don’t need me to tell you it is one the most essential films of the era and of the genre, but it was nice removing myself from a lifetime of a nostalgia and trying to view it as if it were my first time again. I found some stuff I genuinely didn’t enjoy in my 30s after almost 30 years worth of evolution in screenwriting even if it didn’t take away from liking the film.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Funny, Fun, and a Little Bit Insufferable

  The late 00s and early 10s were a pretty good time to be somebody who loved cult horror films with a sense of humor. You had the likes of Trick r Treat, Drag Me to Hell, and my favorite at the time which was The Cabin in the Woods. Whether it was on pay cable or early streaming, the film became a regular fixture in the years I mostly just spent my time frequently re-watching the same movies and drinking far too much beer. Because of that, I’ve gone some years without watching it very frequently cause I got kind of burnt out on it in my 20s but I had this former Blockbuster rental Bluray copy that cost less than 2 bucks so I figured why not see how well the film holds up? The thing that hasn’t held up so well is how smugly in love with its own dialog and cleverness the film is in a way that immediately signals that Joss Whedon was a writer on it. There’s a certain too cute quality to a lot of Whedon’s projects that have made me not like them as much as other people do, sorry to ...

The Green Mile (1999) - Syrupy Collection of Great Character Actors

  The Green Mile was a film that was in a regular rotation for my mom and stepdad when I was growing up, so I saw it many times in the late 90s and early 00s. My love of Stephen King mostly comes from my dad, who owned the first King book I ever read myself in late elementary school (Skeleton Crew) and numerous others I looked at on his shelf all the time and showed me miniseries like IT and The Stand. However, my mom contributed a little bit too with the likes of Creepshow and some of his other 80s adaptations and of course The Green Mile. So I figured why not revisit it since I own it? My biggest problem with The Green Mile is one I share with its spiritual sibling in The Shawshank Redemption which is that it is just very sentimental and sometimes even downright corny. Movies seemingly designed to make middle aged dads get in touch with their emotions by layering that syrup on thick. There’s a place for that and I understand why people really enjoy it, but it just simply isn’t ...

Titanic (1997) - A Tale of Two Movies, One Painful and One Great

  The first time I saw Titanic I was just a little kid, and I bawled my eyes out and then once I dried up I begged to see it again so we sat through that extremely long movie twice in two days. Our VHS copy was well worn by the time we upgraded to DVD, we watched it regularly as a family in the late 90s and early 00s. It is probably a quite vital piece of media when it comes to my love and respect and awe of grandiose filmmaking even though these days I maybe only watch it every 5 years or so. So since my parents got Paramount+ through their cable and it was the only film on there that spoke to me when I was first glancing through their library, I figured why not see how it holds up? Honestly, every time I do revisit the film I spend like the first two hours being painfully reminded why it is so rare that I do. I grew up with a mom and older sister, a very female oriented household, so trust me when I say I’ve heard my fair share of really painfully written and delivered romantic ...