Scream
"Do you like scary movies?"

Sometimes I scare myself. I scare myself with the sheer amount of American teenage movies I still watch. I scare myself with the number of slasher movies I've watched given the fact that I don't really like the genre. And I scare myself that I like Scream as much as I do. After all, it's a fairly standard slasher movie. Killer stalks teenagers and guts them like herring until the heroine defeats him (or ocassionally her) and saves the day. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to see here. Move along...

But there *is* something more to see here beneath Scream's surface. For this is another 'post-modern' ironic film, where the characters know about 'the rules' for surviving a horror movie, and sex doesn't automatically equal death. Where instead of being scared, drunken jocks go to pull the principle's body from the goalposts, and the tarty, obnoxiously false reporter survives. And most importantly, it is a film that takes the old morality tale warnings of the slasher movie and turns them on their head. For if the slasher movie is a teenager-fearing way of telling kids to keep in line, Scream is on their side. If the slasher killer represents the unknown real life ahead, Scream shows you that with a little self-knowledge and forward thinking, you can deal with the future. That's why the killer behaves much more stupidly once it is revealed, and why you have subverting sequences like the killer frantically searching for the heroine who is stalking it. So that makes it OK, right?

Well, no. You see, for all its subversions Scream still falls into the same traps as its predecessors. It still has a mysogynistic streak, dwelling on the female deaths whilst the men die quickly. (And I don't buy director Wes Craven's argument that this is because women get hurt more in real life. Dwelling is dwelling, and it is mostly done to add to the fear that keeps this film effective (Drew Barrymore in the opening sequence - *that* still scares me!) ). It still has sex-talking Tatum ending up dead in one of the longer sequences of the film. And worst of all, it has reawoken the slasher genre. Yes, the damn thing has reawoken, giving us Scream 2 and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend, and Bride of Chucky, and soon Freddy Vs Jason (now *there's* a film thought up by sad schoolboys in the playground!) and I just want YOU TO MAKE THEM STOP! GO AWAY! IT'S NOT NICE OR CLEVER! Sigh. But I still like Scream enough to have it as my 7th favourite film. And that scares me. (And I still claim that Sydney is a dyke!)

(Please note, all pictures displayed here are not mine are used without permission of their owners because I'm recommending that you go out and rent/see/buy a copy of this film, thus increasing their profits. However, should they disapprove, please can they mail me and I'll remove them.)

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