October 9th - Scream (AMC Cut)🔪

 

Just basically off a notepad on my laptop, jotting down thoughts that spill out. Not as much an official review as a running print off the brain until the movie ended.

• If they would just listen to Randy, right? Billy consistently acted like a creep. His line about "I was watching 'The Exorcist' when I thought of you." to Sidney when arriving through her window into her room. So while watching "Scream" (1996) off AMC, I can't help but think of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). Nancy is in her room with Glen arriving in her window, that sexual tension hot and heavy. Nancy wants it about as bad as Glen does. Same with Sid and Billy. 
• One of the running comments on a lot of Letterboxd reviews is the "nope, not gay all" between Billy and Stu, especially when they stab each other and plan such elaborate kills, even against their girlfriends.
• Randy always wondering if he could possibly "get with Sid" and Stu mocking him for it, with the two really going at it in a Blockbuster-like video store about slasher movies...in 1996, this was refreshed. Watching a lot of horror, we can look back before "Scream" and find self-referencial works. This done it exceptionally well. With this renewed energy, it is obvious Hollywood would want to duplicate that ad nauseum. God, how many films to this day still do that? So so many. I guess slasher / horror fans still seem rather cool with that. I noticed Stu never seems too interested in where Tatum went. She went to go get beers and never returned, and yet, Stu doesn't seem to worried about her whereabouts. It's curious, isn't it?
• When Sidney "survives" the first Ghostface attack, and Billy arrives, as the phone drops to the floor, the look on his face...it is such a fun sell I was thinking tonight. He ultimately is one of two killers, but how the film plays with giving him outs to toy with the audience, I still thoroughly enjoy how they did that.
• Trying to explain that experience in the theater in 1996 after a few years of a dead genre in desperate need of shock paddles is always fun because it reminds me of being 20 and not knowing what to expect. And during the mid 90s I was finally able to rent slasher and Rated R horror films, not just borrowing from my uncle or friends. So familiarizing with all the films I once read about but couldn't see helped with all the jokes in "Scream". If you were of a certain age, especially a teenager clever enough to find ways to see the forbidden films, the jokes certainly land.
• On the flip side of that, "Scream" (and those after it) has really been the beneficiary of as much frustration as elation. What was such a blast back then, 25 years later has perhaps created a fatigue many slasher fans today consider a responsibility of "Scream". This film created a monster, so to speak. I don't feel that way, but plenty of my peers in the YouTube sphere have been vocal of how the franchise done as much harm to the genre as good.