SCREAM

This Wes Craven film gave the horror genre a shot in the arm by introducing a meta element, by having the teenage protagonists aware of slasher movie tropes.  This is at its most obvious when a movie buff informs his fellow students of the three rules which films of the type we are watching must follow. 

The first of these is that you are safe if you are a virgin which is amusing given that at this precise moment our main character Sidney is losing her virginity to her boyfriend Billy.

Sidney has been having a bad time of it: we’re just coming up to the anniversary of the horrific rape and murder of her mother, her father has abandoned her for a business conference, and she has been attacked by a killer who at one point she suspects might be Billy himself.

To add insult to injury her fellow students aren’t very sympathetic but then again they are a remarkably unpleasant bunch.  The film starts off with the brutal murder of a couple of students, but no one the next day shows much grief.

This points to one problem, that I didn’t really care much what happened to these characters, and when that is the case it is hard to feel much suspense, not that Craven makes much effort in that direction.

Instead the tone is more comedic and playful, in which it generally succeeds although the line “it’s school, you’ll be safe here“ may not have been intended to be as funny as I found it.

There’s a whodunnit aspect to the story which kept me engaged, even if the reveal at the end doesn’t make much sense.  

It’s not central to the plot but the biggest mystery I was left with concerned Sidney’s dad.  His conference was sufficiently far away that he was flying there yet somehow at the end of the film he turns up, tied and gagged, in his own house.

Quite mystifying.

I understand that one of the things that ‘elevates’ this sort of film is the ‘quality’ of the kills, in which case the only one that stood out to me was that of Sidney’s friend Tatum, involving a garage door.

I guess I was disappointed that not more was done with the meta aspect, but maybe that happens in one or more of the many sequels.