![]() While there are some brutal images, like the hanging, gutted corpse of Casey (Barrymore), it’s never the focus of the film. And the excessive violence, blood, and gore that had often become a staple of the genre aren’t the selling point of Scream. The puritanical politics of the early slasher film are done away with completely. While Randy states the three rules of surviving a horror film, none of them are a requirement to survive in Scream. And Craven continues to undermine the tropes of the slasher genre through these characters. Everyone is a suspect, and that ensures there are no moment of rest when the characters are surrounded by their friends. Along with keeping its characters empathetic, Scream also utilizes the oddball behavior of the friend group to create a strong psychological thriller. While many slasher sequels in the ‘80s and ‘90s reveled in the bloodlust, being full of promiscuous characters and horrifying deaths, Scream keeps its characters empathetic, in spite of their lifestyles. But what other meta horror film seem to have forgotten is how subversive Scream is as a slasher film. That meta-textual approach to the slasher film has become iconic because of this film. ![]() Scream’s life comes from its acknowledgement of those slasher rules. And yet, I think it’s these rules that breathe life into Scream. These films have created the unspoken rules of horror films that every other slasher tried to emulate in the ’80s and ’90s. ![]() As Randy says in Scream, “get too complicated and people stop caring.” The simplest plots make each Carpenter film work, whether it’s They Live, The Thing, or the slasher that Scream is most indebted to, Halloween. John Carpenter understands the simplicity of a story, and it reflects perfectly in his horror projects. Let me be frank for a moment: I don’t think anyone directs horror quite like John Carpenter. Scream was released in 1996, directed by Wes Craven, and starred Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, and Matthew Lillard. With the release of Scream this past weekend, I thought it would be a good time to return to the series roots, to see what sparked the horror phenomenon and evaluate if it still works. ![]()
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