Halloween was yesterday, so why not see a scary movie I haven’t seen before? I opted for Scream before it left Netflix. I hadn’t seen that before. At least not in its entirety. I’d seen the ending a couple times. Knowing the ending didn’t exactly make me want to see the rest.
But hey, I’ve seen Scary Movie, the parody movie of this movie. Is it wise to make a parody of a movie that isn’t meant to be taken all that seriously to begin with? No. No, it isn’t.
Scary Movie sucks.
But, this post isn’t about Scary Movie. It’s about Scream, a movie that may have given director Wes Craven a career resurgence. Craven, of course, was already a master of the horror genre, and hey, he even references his own work. But before we go looking too deeply at the Ghostface character, let’s consider what Scream really is.
Scream, of course, is as much a horror movie as it is about horror movies. The characters in the movie are as knowledgeable about the tropes of the genre as the audience and the director who helped create them. It may not be the most meta horror movie ever made, but it certainly is one of the more accessible and popular ones. The opening scene where Drew Barrymore, biggest star in the movie at the time the movie was made, dies after a series of increasingly creepy phone calls, is famous for a good reason. It’s just really well done. Even knowing the outcome didn’t change the way that scene made me feel.
And then there’s the mystery of who exactly is Ghostface, the cloaked killer who really wants to kill Good Girl type Sydney (Neve Campbell). Is it the horror fan Randy (Jamie Kennedy)? Or Sydney’s creepy boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich)? Or how about David Arquette, who is always a little off-putting?
OK, getting back to what I said before about knowing the ending, is it really a shock who Ghostface is? This is a twenty+ year old movie, so I don’t feel the need to hide spoilers, so here it is.
I do not see how anyone can be surprised Billy is the killer. This guy just radiates “killer” from every pore in his body. Sure, the movie tries to play it off as some sort of teenage sexual frustration, especially considering how Billy just brings up the whole “we don’t have sex and our relationship sucks” conversations at the worst possible times on a routine basis. But the guy’s a creep. He’s a little too short to be Ghostface, but his buddy Stu (Matthew Lillard) isn’t, even though Lillard plays his character way too broadly compared to the rest of the cast.
By the by, special props to having Jamie Kennedy tell Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween to turn around and see the killer while the killer is standing behind him is a really nice touch. Considering he’s addressing the character as “Jamie,” he’s obviously supposed to sound like he’s talking to himself as well. That’s right up there with Sydney saying running upstairs when the killer strikes minutes before doing so herself is a really dumb idea.
But here’s what struck me the most: Ghostface takes a lot of punishment. The victims, aside from the two poor victims in the opening scene, really make Ghostface earn it. Sydney especially keeps smacking that guy around. She’s no helpless victim, and considering I watched Hellraiser yesterday, I have seen a lot of women stand tall and just plain outsmart various dangerous lunatics two nights in a row.
Plus, Sydney and Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) both show the ability to learn in the final scene. Really, the way Sydney (with an assist from Gale) shows just how pathetic Billy and Stu were as killers makes the movie what it is. The two of them seemed more lucky as killers than anything else. These two guys treated their plan like they were characters in a movie, and their plan, well…how was it supposed to work exactly? Even if they frame Sydney’s father for the murders, doesn’t his own body have enough clues on it to show that he, you know, didn’t really do it? I know Deputy Dewey doesn’t seem to suggest the local police are all that sharp, but c’mon.
So, really, a fun movie that is both a great horror movie and a send-up of the whole genre. That’s the kind of movie I can really get into. Now if Billy were less obvious and Lillard restrained himself a little bit, this would have been a lot better.
Grade: A-
0 Comments