Scream: A Post-Modern Horror Movie
Wes Craven Casts Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell and David Arquette
Now ten years old, Wes Craven's postmodern slasher flick Scream still gives laughs and thrills with its knowing and ironic style of horror.
Scream typified a new wave of horror movies in the 1990s, with its high school setting, improbably pretty cast, and ironic, self-aware script. Directed by horror veteran Wes Craven, its cast included Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Skeet Ulrich, Courtney Cox and David Arquette – quite an all-star list for a horror movie!
Postmodern Slasher
Whether or not Scream invented a new genre, the so-called “postmodern slasher flick”, (or “meta-slasher”, in the hands of the more infatuated critics), it is certainly careful to show a high level of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness about horror movies. The plot premise revolves around a killer obsessed with horror movies stalking a group of friends in a small town, and the opening sequence involves Drew Barrymore picking up the phone to a stranger who makes her answer trivia questions about horror movies in order to try to save the life of her boyfriend.
The Rules
One character explains that “there are rules for surviving a horror movie”, which involve suspecting everyone, never drinking or having sex (since the virgin always survives in 1970s horror movies) and certainly never saying “I’ll be right back.” The killer clearly has similar ideas about the world – telling a victim “You might as well go outside to investigate a strange noise!”
In-jokes, or The Revenge of the Nerds
Scream is peppered with subtle references to other horror movies, for example, one of the characters is surnamed Loomis, a name shared by a character in Halloween, and another in Psycho. Wes Craven himself makes a cameo in the film as the high school janitor, wearing a striped jumper modelled on that of Freddy Kreuger from Nightmare on Elm Street. Interlinking reaches its height when Rose McGowan’s character compares their gruesome predicament by a film by “Wes Carpenter”, a nod to the director Wes Craven, and John Carpenter, who directed the famous Halloween horror franchise.
Sequels and Spoofs
Screams’s success led to two more films in the series (with appropriate self-conscious jokes about sequels and trilogies), and was spoofed by the film Scary Movie which, ironically enough, was Scream’s title whilst it was being made. Whether the movie is a genuinely original approach to the horror genre, or just a way of showing off the genre’s awareness that it had little new to offer, Scream is an entertaining and energetic movie. Despite the claims of the postmodernists, high culture this ain’t – but high camp and highly enjoyably it certainly is.
