DAY 29
Scream
Wes Craven, 1996
A masked killer starts terrorising the citizens of a small town, especially a teenage girl who is still grieving over the murder of her mother.
Why not revisit Wes Craven's
other significant contribution to cinema that
also inspired a less-than-thrilled reaction? Looking back over that review, I stand by my original comment (and how it echoes a similar sentiment in my previous write-up on
A Nightmare on Elm Street) that if you don't really get in on it the first time around then you never will, but I guess on the other hand I guess it's worth seeing what its merits are outside of being straight-up scary - and that's where
Scream tries to thread one very small needle with its attempt to hybridise the slasher genre with too-clever-by-half attempts at satirising not just the genre itself but also the uptick in sensationalist media coverage of particularly heinous crimes. This is naturally examined not just through Courtney Cox's muckracking journalist Gale Weathers but also the minds of the various teenage characters who respond to the events in different ways (especially Neve Campbell's protagonist Sidney, who is working through her own pre-existing trauma). While the overly self-referential nature of the film can get a little grating and might just be what keeps me from liking this film more (like I said, hard needle to thread - even something like
Cabin in the Woods only barely manages to pull it off), I think the film is more than carried by how it actually works to deliver a more substantial iteration of the slasher that engages with Sidney's complex emotions while being relatively restrained with the actual terror and violence (whether by design or not - did this film get a comedy reputation simply by virtue of how many pratfalls Ghostface seems to do any time he's chasing a victim?). Anyway, I guess I'm okay with this now, but as noted, I don't think it'll ever become my favourite scary movie.