Scream Review

My disillusionment with the slasher genre and horror films on the whole is wholly my fault. I’ve just never cared for them, and convinced myself that they’re all the same as one another. A group of trope-induced teenagers and one token adult find themselves facing off against some sort of Scooby-Doo villain that took too many Ritalin and has since decided to don a clumsily woven cape and a mandatory mask in the hopes of dealing with their traumatic childhood or laboratory torture. It’s all been more or less the same, but Scream looks to mock the tropes that I became immediately tired of.

Whilst Scream never looks to re-invent the genre, it does take a few potshots at the conventional narratives that have diluted the enjoyment of the genre thus far. One of the main selling points of the slasher genre is (apparently) the kills. How creative they can be or how gory they are has instilled a standard within the genre. The more creative the better, and whilst it doesn’t appeal to me, Scream is a rather special and inventive film in that regard, which will hopefully settle well with fans of the genre. With it still not being quite my cup of tea, I can appreciate the lengths Wes Craven goes to in making sure these scenes are balanced with that horrific entertainment value and also the wry style of the film. It’s a nice blend, a very creative one too, and it does hold the film together rather well, with a few decently unexpected twists and engaging characters.

Post-modernism can only take you so far, though, and whilst Scream is certainly a well-written piece, it falls into the same pitfalls as the genre it looks to mock. It’s forgivable here, thanks in part to the well-cast leads and that aforementioned writing. At the end of it all though, mocking it all by doubling down on the cliché of the genre is just rehashing horror tropes, but with a wry smile rather than a terrified scream. It just doesn’t work that well for me, and what we’re left with is a hell of a lot of nudges and winks towards the camera, most of them carried by a charmingly, perfectly cast Matthew Lillard.

The seriousness of the cast and their conviction throughout make those few jokes dotted throughout better than they have any right to be. Unsurprisingly, most of those lines are fed directly to Lillard. He’s a tour de force throughout this one, a real master of playing just about any role. With such a sudden surge of nostalgia held for Lillard currently, it’s keeping me optimistic that the man may come back swinging, with more roles like that of Scream and Scooby-Doo. He’s a phenomenal talent, and he proves as much here.

You can tell whether or not you’ll like Scream from the opening five minutes alone. That scene with Barrymore rattling through the various horror conventions found within the typical genres, and how easy it is to mock them, sets the general bar the film looks to vault. Craven and his cast produce a formidable piece, one that has since been mocked by other comedies and horrors for getting in with the crowd they looked to mock. Such is life, though, and that doesn’t detract from anything this great horror has to offer.