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Post by slayrrr666 on Nov 25, 2005 12:44:46 GMT -5
 Another one of my "Never-ending Shame" series, and a debatable movie as well: "Scream" is at once a great horror movie and also one of the most hated films in the genre. **SPOILERS** A young teenager (Drew Barrymore) is viciously slaughtered, and shakes up her high-school. A group of friends, Sidney (Neve Campbell) her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich) his friend Stu (Matthew Lillard) and his girlfriend Casey (Rose McGowen) start talking about how terrible it was and decide to throw a party to get the tension out. However, the kill has attracted big city news reporter Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox, before she was Cox-Arquette) to town who immediately buts heads with town deputy Dewey (David Arquette). After Sid is attacked, Gail and Dewey decide to try to get along so they can help uncover the murderer. This proves very hard, as the killer arrives at the party being held and starts bumping off more teens, finally leaving Sid, Billy, Gail, Dewey, Stu, and local horror freak Randy (Jaime Kennedy) to stay alive in the killer's path. The killer reveals that s/he is also responsible for a back-story involving Sid a little over a year before. The Good News: Although it seems as though nothing more went on, that is it, and Kevin Williamson did a fantastic job with only those few scenes. He manages to get jumps and laughs coming pretty regularly in the short span, which is spread out over an hour and forty minutes. By sending up the genre, he gives himself more room to wriggle with than by simply parodying it. I feel this wouldn't have been as big if the film was like 'Airplane,' where it parodied the genre. The film does have some pretty scary moments, including my favorite when Sid is in the bathroom and she checks under the stalls for a person in the stalls, then sees the killer's boots and finally a long black drape come down to hide themselves, and she is forced to make the decision of either risking her life to get out or risk her life in a confrontation with the killer. A great moment and one of few really scary scenes in the film. I also love the whole ending, with Randy commenting on the movie he is watching while the killer is creating the same scene behind him, not to his knowledge, to the whole truth about the killings being revealed, to the final outcome. The whole party scene is great, with several deaths, a few false deaths, and a ton of blood. I do have to say that, while I am very good at guessing the killer the first time I watch one of these movies, it took a while for everything to click and I knew who the killer was. Some friends who also do that as well figured it out right about the same time I did, so it could through you off as well. It was also a nice creative twist to have a back-story that happened off-camera instead of being shown as the prologue to a film. Gutsy move and well worth it. The Bad News: I strongly believe this film is responsible for about 90% of the truly terrible 'horror' films out there right now. By poking fun of the genre within the genre confines is, at once a creative move, and the other a terrible idea because now you have the whole subgenre of horror films where everyone comments on the situation at hand by referencing it with another horror movie. It was nice the first time out, but now every horror film since has at least one person who will reference the situation with a famous horror film. It is very tiresome, irritating, and no one cares anymore. I blame 'Scream' for this trend, and for that I will not rate it above a '9' for that reason. The Final Verdict: Even though it spawned a whole annoying subgenre of the horror film, this is still a pretty scary film and at least deserves a look for anybody seriously interested in horror films. Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence |
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Post by Bartwald on Nov 25, 2005 14:18:58 GMT -5
The Bad News: I strongly believe this film is responsible for about 90% of the truly terrible 'horror' films out there right now. Scream was popular and started a trend - yes. But let's not blame it for the poor Scream-wannabes it spawned! I like this film a lot, of course: funny, scary, twisty, clever and bloody, it was the best step Wes craven could make at the time. Scream 2 is almost as good (though it's lighter on blood and has a weaker ending) and I even enjoyed Scream 3 to some degree. |
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Post by slayrrr666 on Nov 25, 2005 14:25:16 GMT -5
I think I should blame it. It wasn't as gory as those before it, and it became popular, so others tried to duplicate it's success with less gore, and you know my gorehound tendencies.
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Post by Bartwald on Nov 25, 2005 14:32:13 GMT -5
But slayrrr - wouldn't it be like blaming Romero for, let's say, Zombie Lake, Zombiez or any such living dead shite?
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Post by slayrrr666 on Nov 25, 2005 15:37:50 GMT -5
I actually liked Zombie Lake, but I have yet to see Zombiez, but I have seen it in the video stores. I'm not really a fan of blaxploitation films, so I may never see it. And Romero's movies, we got far better imitations than the ones Scream produced. We got Zombie 2, The Beyond, City of the Living Dead, Cannibal Holocaust and all those movies from Dawn, so I consider it an even trade-off.
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Post by Bartwald on Nov 26, 2005 15:48:10 GMT -5
Ah, okay we can't convince one another here, perhaps. Nevermind.
Zombiez is apparently pretty awful, though.
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Post by slayrrr666 on Nov 26, 2005 16:00:32 GMT -5
Well, here's my beef with "Scream" though: unlike Romero, whose inspirations made good films homing his films, "Scream" inspirations were pretty awful. I did like IKWYDLS and Urban Legend, but look at the crap that came out at the time because of this one. That's what I'm getting at. That's the difference what I meant/ Romero's homages were pretty good, while Scream's weren't as much.
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Post by Bartwald on Nov 26, 2005 16:12:51 GMT -5
slayrrr, friend, I really think there were many more totally awful zombie films than good zombie films; but I worry not 'bout this - just don't watch what I know will suck too much to keep me interested... same with what Scream spawned - don't watch most of the crap and wouldn't think of blaming Scream for the shitty quality of these. But we're going in circles here already...
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Post by slayrrr666 on Nov 26, 2005 16:14:25 GMT -5
Yeah, I agree too. We're gonna go round and round on this, so let's call a truce and end it here, while we're both on good terms with each other. Deal?
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Post by Bartwald on Nov 26, 2005 16:16:51 GMT -5
It's a deal.
So... uh... anyone else out there saw Scream? A pretty good film, you know...
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Post by Heineken Skywalker on Nov 26, 2005 22:00:49 GMT -5
By sending up the genre, he gives himself more room to wriggle with than by simply parodying it. I feel this wouldn't have been as big if the film was like 'Airplane,' where it parodied the genre. Or like, SCARY MOVIE?  I haven't seen this movie since around 2000, so I went back to imdb to check my original rating of it back then and I gave it a 4/10. Guess I didn't think much of it back then. Not sure if I want to take the time to give it a second chance.  |
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Post by spacer on Nov 28, 2005 6:26:31 GMT -5
For me it is a legendary movie which renewed and revived the slowly dying horror genre. It showed the new way for gory films. It made it scary once more, when the old-fashioned horror movies were funny and grotesque in the moments intended for fear to appear. It was scary and filled with suspense, one of the best Wes Craven's flick. It had a lot of parodistic features but it didn't crossed the line of absurd like in the scary movie (I hate parodies except Naked Gun and Space Balls). It gave a new face to horror. Spectacular musical background! The scenes of knife attacks looked quite realistic and were gory like hell  The atmosphere was very-well built with a suspense growing all the time. The mask business was a masterpiece. The reactions of the people look natural and non-politically shallowed. There was more in this too. It wasn't just a shallow stupid gory flick. It had a message about the contemporary problems like violence and callousness of people. I liked the logic and famous comments which were scorned above by slayrrrr. You can't blame the flick for the creation of the new sub-genre. It's just silly. |
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Post by Quorthon on Nov 28, 2005 13:05:41 GMT -5
I liked Scream back in the day, but I don't think it gave new life to the horror genre. It's imitators started ruining horror, taking away all the scares, violence, gore, personality and replacing it with hyper-sexy youths about as shallow as a drained kiddie pool. Horror films were in a slump starting in the early to mid-nineties. Scream didn't help things out much. All Scream did was reinvent the Slasher--and everyone suddenly thought that all horror films were either slashers or ghost stories (of which there are way too damn many). Real horror has been limping along like an animal hit by a car that just won't die. I said this somewhere else about the genre: The 80's was the golden age for horror, gore, and slasher films. Then we had Scream and the post-Scream era of neo-slashers. Then we had The Ring and the post-Ring PG-13 weakling horror film era. We're leaving the post-Ring PG-13 era now and entering a frightful new era: The Total Remake Era. And not a damn one of 'em is or will be as good as the originals.
Scream was a rare, good, original film that led to a bunch of really awful copycat films. Each weaker than the last. The whole horror genre, now, is pretty much a joke to mainstream audiences. I've never seen so many big-budget disappointments in my life. Any horror film starring a hot-shot established actor is, from what I've seen, guarenteed to be crappy. I saw Godsend, and I was annoyed. Putting human trash like Paris Hilton in a horror film really guarentees that Horror remain a joke.
Sorry 'bout the rant. But I love my horror that much.
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Post by slayrrr666 on Nov 28, 2005 13:39:41 GMT -5
Q, you and I feel the same way. Scream wasn't as good as people think. Just because it made horror mainstream isn't a good thing because of all the shit that followed it. Even The Ring wasn't that good. I re-watched it again a few days ago, and I sat there bored by it, and my first impression of it wasn't that thrilled to begin with. It was a 6 out of 10, so it probably fell now down to 5 out of 10. Scream was a little better because it was an R horror film, but just because it is popular doesn't make it good.
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Post by Quorthon on Nov 28, 2005 14:07:38 GMT -5
Scream really started the new era of bloodless/goreless horror. God I miss 80's horror. More creative special effects, better stories, more violence and gore--back then the filmmakers were trying to top each other, trying to out-scare or out-gore the previous guy. Now it's all "let's get in line and make some clones." Check out the House of Wax thread for my lackluster impression of that movie.
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