warning: mentions of violence, bloody gifs and photos ahead
so here we are, our very 1st entry here on the slashers and gore page of the shrine and what better way to kick it off than to spotlight this generation's absolute favoritest most specialest slasher darling: Scream (1996)?
this movie's captured the heart of millions. i mean, there's really no need to state the obvious but it's a cult classic for a pretty good reason! the 90's were some interesting times for sure. we got over the slashers and the generic tried-and-true formulas of the Halloweens and the Friday the 13ths and the Texas Chainsaw Massacres before (obviously not ragging on those movies bc i absolutely LOVE them but y'all know what i mean right?), so what was next? why, meta-horror of course!
with the dark and irony-saturated market of a generation that had seen both the stock market crashes of 1973 AND 1987, rapidly changing job markets, economic landscapes, decreasing wages but increasing prices on damn near everything-- and along with the rise of a fun little something called The Internet-- the 90's in america happened to be an interesting era, to say the least.
i'm not gonna front. i think scream was a little too mature for a kid my age in the early 2000's so i sadly only ever heard about it in passing, on the peripherals of the horror conversations. not to mention that i didn't even get to hop onto this silly lil thing called the internet until much later down the line, when i was in middle school in the late 2000's-early 2010's... i didn't really have many opportunities to get my hands on this movie despite hearing so much about it and even watching the Scary Movie series reference it as well. i was unsupervised, sure, but i was a kid with only so much tech knowledge and access to pay-per-view tv
that being said, i can't exactly say when i watched it for the 1st time. maybe when i was a teen? or a young adult. idk. either way, Scream is just one of those movies that no matter when you watch it now, it's so embedded into the media landscape that you've probably watched it without even realizing you've watched it. it's just one of those movies
it seeps into your consciousness via osmosis and nowadays with gen z and gen alpha's obsession with all things y2k (including pre-y2k i guess) movies like this, The Craft, Ginger Snaps, Hackers, Practical Magic, Jennifer's Body and others are all nigh inescapable. Scream just so happens to be That Bitch, ya feel me?
this is a movie that changed the entire damn landscape of what horror movies could achieve, most likely reinvigorating the american public consciousness into loving horror yet again. and what way to do that than to entice an entire irony-poisoned audience into laughing along with the typical slasher plotline laid out so generously by the semi-self-aware characters on the screen? this movie was like crack cocaine to the greasy grungy teens of the mid-90's.
there is absolutely nothing i can possibly add to a general recap of this movie tbh. others have done such a great job of it before me and there are a million video essays from sidney's relationship with her dead mom, to the origins of the ghostface mask, to the way this movie impacted the cinematic landscape as a whole.
besides that, this movie is purposefully formulated to be the Generic Suburban Slasher Movie™, but with a twist! according to many, the marketing was so effectively plastered with drew barrymore's face that everyone was absolutely shocked that her comeback was cut short (haha get it) during the opening sequence. i'm sure the audience enjoyed the little back and forth that ghostface and drew's character was having as she raced around the house to lock all of the doors and windows in her picturesque upper-middle class family's home. he was quizzing her on horror movies that everyone in that theatre already watched before! how neat! even the audience members could participate in the wacky ongoings of a serial killer pelting a frantic teen girl with questions like "who was the killer in Friday the 13th?" as he was getting ready to filet her like a mignon (it was mrs. voorhees, btw. the main killer wasn't jason until the 2nd movie a year later lol)
who doesn't love a sarcastic and self-aware movie? esp one in a genre that was so unbelievably fatigued from the horrors that happened to be the 80's. when drew's body (sorry i can't remember her character's name) was strung up into that tree, i feel like that was when mr. wes craven knew that he had something special on his hands here. well... at least, i think so! apparently the man didn't even wanna accept the ghostface mask that we've all come to know and love today at first bc he wanted something that looked less cheap and more haunting. he couldn't find what he was looking for so at the last minute he decided "yeah fuck it, whatever. we'll use this one". goes to show much he knows!
some ppl even talk about being in the theatres when this movie finally released and being gobsmacked by the final twist where it was revealed that there was not only one killer, but two!!
yeah, back in the mid-90's i can imagine a lot of ppl went into this movie thinking they had seen it all. most ppl probably looked at the singular name of the title, the vague movie poster and typical marketing and shrugged at it. then they heard ppl coming back from the movie theatres ranting and raving about it, so. maybe in the end, they didn't regret it after all.
it's a movie that has all the hallmarks of a deeply, deeply 90's movie. the plaid, the denim, the suburbs, the stripes. the quintessential 90's don bluth style haircut that mr. billy loomis was rocking in order to shove into our faces the fact that he's Cool, Good Looking, y'know... the Bad Boy.
it's almost laughably picturesque and typical, it's drowning in it. on purpose, of course.
i guess i should probably try bridging the gap here in terms of history and reality to point out that it's really not a coincidence that this movie has some staying power. even if it weren't a cabin-in-the-woods style meta-horror movie, this film is still evergreen and still holds up to the test of time til this day. especially during these trying times. i feel like the same irony poisoning the teens and young adults used to survive the crushing reality of late stage capitalism and the Rat Race back then is most likely the same irony poisoning that the youths are using as a coping mechanism now. when you really get down to it, aside from y2k and the dot com bubble crash, america as a whole hasn't changed much within these past four decades or so.
so looking at it all from that perspective, it's not hard to see why the kids are still ranting and raving about this movie! it's got a dedicated die-hard fanbase that truly never seems to go away. hell, my own friend even met muthafuckin skeet ulrich last year at a horror con she went to with her family. i was so insanely jealous... grr. but i mean, damn. this movie is so powerful that mr. ulrich can still tour the states as good ol billy loomis more than 20 years later and still get his coins that way. dream job if you ask me
so what can we say about Scream? was it the first ever meta horror movie to hit the silver screen in america? well... no. even wes craven himself directed a meta horror movie a couple of years before Scream aptly called Wes Craven's New Nightmare. there was Peeping Tom, the 2nd installment in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, and Monster Squad as well. so why did Scream capture the hearts of so many so thoroughly? like i said before, the 90's was an interesting powder keg of many different things happening all at once. i mean, history is never boring at all, not especially when you're living right smack dab in the middle of it, but it definitely wasn't a boring time at all living and growing up during these times.
and it was also most likely a lightning in the bottle kind of situation as well. i've noticed that the horror movies that withstand the test of time and grow into cult status happen to be not the 1st ones to ever do it (well, not always), but the ones to do it with the most style, the most flair. the ones who have the most impact.
Scream's strengths is its ability to take whatever is presented on screen, lead you into truly believing something (the bad boy is the killer, the first girl whose face is all over the posters is going to live, the dorky virgin kid is definitely going to die) and then taking that assumption and twirling it around some before either confirming those suspicions, or just straight up smacking you in the face with a cleverly-placed plot twist. i gotta say, i absolutely love the way mr. craven handled those plot twists. it's a tool that isn't always handled so very uh... gracefully. aside from the Nightmare on Elm St stuff, i have to admit i haven't watched much of mr. craven's other works but i do enjoy the way he handles everything in this movie so thumbs up for that!
and i'm not going to pretend that the actors didn't put their entire pussies into this thing either, i mean this was a stacked cast from top to bottom. it was a high-quality production and the a-listers were at the top of their game when they were acting here. drew barrymore did her damn thing as the iconic blonde-bobbed victim that got brutally slaughtered alongside her jock boyfriend in the first 15 minutes of this movie. apparently it was even her idea to have that done in the first place! can you believe it. she fought to have her character be the first to die. wild. props to drew barrymore!
so anyways, let's cut to the chase! (man i cannot stop making accidental puns abt this movie geez louise)
billy loomis and stu macher, huh. the double kill reveal had some girls gooped and gagged as the kids say nowadays. i'm p sure both matthew lillard and skeet ulrich have heard it all a million times before, but they will most likely never read this page a day in their lives so i'll go right ahead and say it: damn. that shit was gay.
like actually, like really. i knew about the homoerotic undertones going into rewatching Scream a couple of years ago but that kitchen scene still stays with me, and this is coming from someone who absolutely loves matthew lillard. that dude is... well. he certaintly is a loving and affectionate man, let's just say that lol
it isn't at all a surprise that whenever matthew lillard hops up onto the scene, things always get a little weird right? take Hackers for example, an absolute masterpiece that was also born out of 90's internet hysteria if you choose to ignore the main guy who couldn't act his way out a wet paper bag unfortunately. lillard's character in that movie? chef's kiss.
mr. lillard... on behalf of all queers of all types for the past 3 or so decades, i bestow you a medal of our gratitude 🙇
and man did he deliver in Scream! lillard was in his element here as we could plainly see. he always plays those slightly unhinged, rude but also well-meaning punk characters in many movies and his roles are very physical, which was used to the max during that aforementioned kitchen scene. he was a delight every single minute he graced the screen <3
and how could we not talk about dear mr. ulrich? i've only ever watched him in The Craft as the shitty shallow boyfriend, but according to many other ppl, i'm not missing out on much. mr. ulrich is great at what he does i'm sure but i don't really think he's my cup of tea if all he's ever typecasted into is those same roles. i mean, there's really only so many miles a pretty face can carry you, after all. regardless, i loved him as the slightly offputting and dangerous boyfriend in this movie. idk if something was in the air when they were filming this, but that final major reveal towards the end in the kitchen was really really well done. he played the unhinged and vengeful serial killer wonderfully in this movie, and there was something about him holding that knife in such a way that really made me wonder if maybe his own physical talents were wasted on just making him sit around and pout in The Craft.
needless to say, this movie has a lot of style, a lot of flair. the wonderfully named randy meeks (played by hilarious jamie kennedy) brought a much more lighthearted, sincere and comedic angle to the dark and brooding and deeply unhinged energy that both billy loomis and stu macher had brewing in the background of every scene they were in. even david arquette and courtney cox's little side story was a different kind of comedy routine that helped cut through the tension a little bit until the end. this movie balances comedy and tension so unbelievably well, i just knew it had to be a group effort on everyone else's part bc wow. everything fell together in such a stellar way
idk if it's the camera equipment that they used in the 90's but all of the scenes, including the party over at stu's big fuckoff mcmansion (god, everyone lives in mcmansions in this movie, what am i talkin about?) just had that nice grainy and homey kinda feel to it. it wasn't low-budget, no, but there's just something about that 80's and 90's video camera quality and sound design that easily lands this movie as a comfort watch for a lot of ppl. it's really not hard to see why!
Scream expertly balances humor and horror, has a cast of colorful characters, not a minute of screentime is wasted, and has a homoerotic friendship between two hot serial killers and a badass bitch of a final girl. it really truly is the perfect halloween movie to throw on in the background for any house party, or any lonely night at home around the spooky szn. i'm sure a lot of ppl immediately recognized it for the instant hit classic that it was over 2 decades ago, and 2 decades later they are still not proven wrong. Scream is indeed something special, and a movie i'd join millions of others in putting on the "horror movies you just HAVE to watch" list for anyone who asks.
so... a 10/10 overall from me ofc since it would be like, horror movie fanatic sin numero uno to not give it a 10/10 at this point. it truly gets no notes from me tbh! even if it wasn't a keystone movie in the horror media landscape, it's still such a super solid movie on its own anyways. ofc i'm biased bc i absolutely love matthew lillard and the rest of the cast wasn't so hard on the eyes either but it's a movie that manages to be a pretty great slasher while still being a fantastic meta-commentary on the landscape of slasher movies and the 90's as a whole.
it doesn't skimp on anything, everything is dialed to a 10 in this flick. the comedy and jokes and the pacing all land perfectly, the tension is still wonderfully built at the house party stu threw, the reveals had the audiences shocked, but they didn't come out of left field entirely either. the killer's design is amazingly simple yet effective and the use of a cheap halloween mask you could've found anywhere in town was genius ("anyone can wear the mask" lol wonder why i like that one). the actors were all amazing and knew how to balance both horror and humor at the same time, which is not an easy feat
a lot of actors say that there are two very difficult genres to act well in: horror movies and comedies. you have to have a finger on the pulse of the landscape where you intend to release your films, you have to be quick-witted and the delivery must land as often as possible. it's high stakes making comedy movies, even if it doesn't look it! everyone has their own senses of humor and their own fears, so that makes sense. but Scream hits all of the notes perfectly like a trained singer. i haven't come across a single person online or irl who absolutely hates this movie. it's a darling of a meta-horror movie indeed
so if you haven't already, give this movie a try! or pop it on the tv for a rewatch again! you can never go wrong with the perfect meta-horror movie. even wimps who hate scary movies will find something to like with this gem
thx for reading!
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