10 Years of Bitter Posts - Why SCREAM is one of the best films ever made

One of my all-time favorite movies is SCREAM and so it's little shock that over the years I've found opportunities to blog about it. It's one of the best horror films ever made and I honestly think probably ranks among the best spec scripts ever written. I feel like there's a lot to be learned from it, and these posts cover quite a bit of ground:

Lessons from Wes Craven & Kevin Williamson's SCREAM

Why I like Wes Craven's characters and what I fear from SCREAM 4

This is where so many horror specs I read fail. I see a lot of scripts that are clearly trying to be franchises, to the point where all they've done is work out the gimmick that will drive the series. So much time is invested in giving the killer a cool look, or a gruesome gimmick to his kills. Where they fail is in coming up with a strong dramatic arc to sustain the story. Too often the cast of characters is treated as little more than a future body count: a dead asshole jock here, a slutty girl with nice breasts there. 

And sure, there are plenty of bad B-movies made every year. There's a long list of produced slashers that never dug deep. 

But the horror thrillers that endure? The ones that future filmmakers grow up wanting to emulate? Psycho, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream - they all have an important element in common: strong character arcs for their protagonists. Your hero isn't the guy wielding the blade and drawing blood. Never forget that.

Scream's Sidney Prescott: Horror's Greatest Heroine:

Without hesitation I picked Sidney Prescott, who was not only horror's greatest heroine, but possibly one of the strongest modern teen females ever created. She's perhaps the best-realized version of the girl-next-door turned heroine. When she takes on the killer, she doesn't have the advantage of super powers, cool weapons or military training (ala Buffy, Ripley, or Sydney Bristow.) She's also got her shit together a lot better than some of the WB female leads of the day, who tended towards mopeyness, martyrdom, and wallowing in their own baggage.

Yes, like most heroines, she's got some issues from a dead parent, but unlike say Lana Lang or Joey Potter, those issues don't DEFINE her. The wound is there, but it's not stopping her from interacting normally with her friends and it doesn't feel like she uses every conversation as an excuse to pick at that scab. She has friends, she's well-adjusted and she's generally likable. You get the sense you could carry on a conversation with young Sidney, and not once get the urge to smack her, or feel like she's making it all about herself.

I'm aware she's a descendant of Nightmare on Elm Street's Nancy and Halloween's Laurie, but I feel she is a successor that improves on the original. They're both icons in their own right, but Sidney is a better-realized character in my opinion.

The opening of SCREAM 4 - expectations and misdirection:

The opening scene initially left me disappointed, until I got what the creators were going for. We open with two teens - played by Pretty Little Liars' Lucy Hale and 90210's Shenae Grimes - who pretty much embody everything the original Scream characters weren't. One is dumb enough to keep talking to a Facebook stalker, and another one when faced with a threatening phone call from the killer, first hangs up, and then later passes the phone to her friend. (Grimes by the way, makes ZERO effort to distinguish this character from her 90210 role, right down to the same acting ticks.) Moments later, these girls are dumb enough to actually open the front door when it might as well be flashing "KILLER ON THE OTHER SIDE."

So it's no shock when these two are swiftly dispatched, and just as I'm thinking "Wow, that was oddly tensionless for a Scream opening," the title card for Stab 5 comes up and I realize the joke is on me. It puts a clever spin on what we just saw. After all, in a world where Stab 5 is supposed to be of questionable quality, Shenae Grimes WOULD be its Drew Barrymore. Consider that a point for the casting people. (This is probably the best place to note that Scream 4 continues the series tradition of strong casting, not just for the genre, but for a feature in general.)

I have too much affection for most of the SCREAM characters to want to see them actually killed off, but after the latest film, my relief at their survival made me realize that sometimes what I wanted doesn't always lead to the best story. And so I wrote this: Scream 4 - when a core character needs to die:

Sometimes in order to make these stakes real, you've got to sacrifice a beloved character. The thinking is that if the audience sees you gun down an audience favorite, you've proven that affection for the characters alone won't save them and everyone is fair game. Supposedly, when Return of the Jedi was being developed, screenwriter Lawrence Kasden was a major proponent for killing off one of the core characters at some point in the story. He felt it would have been more powerful for the Rebel victory to come at some cost, and he was a major advocate for killing a character early in Act Three, so that the audience would worry that they were just the first of several.

And finally, check out my three-part interview with SCREAM 4 co-producer Carly Feingold, starting here.