Scream (1996)

Scream (1996)

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Every once in a while, a horror film comes along that is well made and well designed, and uses the genre in a way not seen before. One such movie is Scream. Unfortunately the creation of a good film like this inspires countless clones and inevitable sequels which detract from the quality of the original.

Scream starts with a good idea, a killer is stalking people in a small town called Woodsboro, and dispatching them in horror movie fashion gory ways. Sounds like its been done before. But this killer is used in the film to satirise the whole field of horror movies, from the killer being a very obsessed student of horror films, (He corrects the first victims answer that Jason was the killer in Friday The 13th) through to the other characters acting as though they are characters in a horror film, which of course, they are.

A clever idea, although it does backfire on itself. All the primary characters, especially the rather annoying Randy, played by the equally annoying Jamie Kennedy, take the "rules" and conventions of a horror film as absolute gospel truth.

The good points of the film outweigh the negatives. It is a very well crafted whodunnit, with a logical, but unexpected reveal of who the killer is. It does satirise the genre well, (one of its aims), and caters for the expected quota of blood and shock scenes. It is also quite clever. The mask used by the killer is based upon a painting called "The Scream".

It is hard however to view Scream as a solo film. It is touted now as the the first chapter of the Scream Trilogy, a series that starts out good and rapidly declines in quality. Scream also was the inspiration for other "whodunnit" style slashers such as Urban Legend, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Valentine and other boring as hell films.

If only Scream was a solo film instead of a chapter in a trilogy (soon to be four films).

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