"Don't Fuck With the Original"

With great anticipation, I went this weekend to see Scream 4, the latest installment in the post-modern slasher series that revitalized the horror genre in the late 90s. At one point a character tells Courtney Cox's Gale Weathers "You were my 90s!" and the same was true for me and series creator Kevin Williamson, the openly gay man who also brought us Dawson's Creek. I avidly followed the original Scream trilogy, as well as Williamson's various films and series, I wrote two plays heavily influenced by his hyper verbal dialogue, and my closet door was even decorated in tribute to his oeuvre. Scream 4 arrives a decade after 3 (which was noticeably *not* written by Williamson), long enough that what's old is new again-- or at the very least an exploitable brand. While Scream 4 isn't particularly scary (no Scream sequel has been as frightening as the ferocious original), it's great fun, and it does a nice job of encapsulating, in the tried and true wink-wink Scream way, everything that's happened to the horror genre over the last ten years. In the amusingly constructed opener, for instance, we get nods to torture porn, Japanese horror, and the self referential conceit itself, as well as acknowledgements of Facebook and Twitter. (The horror!) As the film progresses, there emerges a running discussion of remakes and "reboots," the dominant trend in horror since roughly 2003, and the obligatory "rules" conversation. This last bit proves sketchy at best: for instance, when was it established that gay characters are immune in horror films? (Clearly Williamson and co. missed the gay pal who got creamed by a bus in Bride of Chucky.) Still, Scream 4 has fun updating its style for a new generation, with a marked increase in gore as well as the brutal physicality of the killings. Towards the end, the killer, wanting to appear the "sole surviving" victim, gives themself nasty wounds and even falls back through a glass coffee table, a gleefully insane bit that recalls the deranged energy of the first film's culprits. While the new teens are nicely developed and appealing, it's in the handling of the returning characters that 4 falters at times. Gale's quip that "I've still got it" seems like an attempt to convince the audience (she lacks that oomph the character had in the original movies), and Dewey is given very little to do besides react to his wife's initiative in the murder investigation and fend off the advances of a smitten deputy. (Dewey is the sheriff now, but he's still seemingly as inept and slow on the uptake as ever.) Neve Campbell, who looks stunning, comes off the best, with a typically strong role in the film and a number of strong dramatic scenes-- plus plenty of butt kicking. (The heroine once praised for "having a Linda Hamilton thing going on" decidedly *does* still got it.) The shortcomings are ultimately balanced out by the satisfyingly twisty plot, and the climax proves that the Scream franchise, after all these years, still has something to add to the cultural conversation. The killer's motivation turns out to be a direct product of our exhibitionist, famous-for-being-famous society, making Scream 4 as damning to the 21st century's spawn as part 1 was to the "desensitized little shits" of 1996.

Old Nightmares

So when was my last post, 1982? Well, this being October, I am getting into the Halloween spirit and thought it'd be fun to do a rundown of some of my favorite seasonal movies, TV, etc. I'll start with Wes Craven's New Nightmare, the end credits of which are unspooling as I type this. It's not a Halloween movie per se, but I'll always associate it with the holiday because a.) it was released in October and b.) I bought the *novelization* at Spag's, the awesomely kitschy Worcester department store, on one of my family's annual "fall rides." See every year we'd take a daytrip to see the fall foliage (my dad goes nuts for that, as well he should) and wind up at the Halloween Outlet, an amazing store packed to the gills with costumes, props, and just about anything else a horror-obsessed kid like me could want. (They used to display those giant animatronic props, like the crazy electric chair that would go off every ten minutes or so, stopping everyone in dead silence while the dummy writhed in mock agony and smoke plumed outward. Rock on.) On one of these rides, circa 1994, we stopped by Spag's and I picked up the New Nightmare paperback. I was psyched about the movie, though we ironically didn't get around to it until the video release. (Lest you think my parents wouldn't let me see an R-rated horror flick in theaters, I was corrupted at a pretty young age by my dad, who showed me the likes of "Halloween" and "Evil Dead 2" when I was, I dunno, 9? "New Nightmare" is something we totally would've seen at an after school matinee. Why we didn't is a mystery.) It was a typical novelization, I guess, but I liked the meta movie-within-a-movie storyline and the cheesy interludes supposedly detailing the author's own close encounters with Freddy. Plus there were 8 pages of rad black and white photos. So before long I'd read and re-read it umpteen times and was running around pretending I was Heather Langenkamp, wearing her hot skirt and blazer combo and making important Hollywood phone calls on my remote control, er, cell phone. (And yet my parents *never suspected* I was gay? Talk about mysteries.) So when I finally saw the sucker, I already knew everything that was going to happen but loved it anyway. There's so much cheese in New Nightmare-- Langenkamp's melodramatic performance, the stereotypical villainous doctor out to prove that horror movies ruin young minds, dialogue like "Everything is NOT FINE!" to name a few. There are numerous gaps in logic, like the relentlessly unprofessional staff at the hospital (prone to stage whispering and grimly pantomiming about a patient whose mother is IN THE ROOM). But damnit if it doesn't work like gangbusters. The premise was so different at the time-- sort of "The Player" meets "Nightmare on Elm Street," with Freddy spilling out into the lives of the movies' cast and crew (Wes Craven even plays himself near the end)-- and there was some awesomely over-the-top imagery, starting with a cooly redesigned Krueger. For the first time in a "Nightmare" movie, an actual kid was a central character (Heather's on-screen son Dylan, played by Miko Hughes of "Pet Sematary" fame), which allowed for all sorts of connections with Grimm's Fairy Tales and parental fears of death and screwing up your kid. It's just a fun, fast-paced, visually striking movie (the freeway sequence is a stunner), and I still watch it about once a year. "Nightmare 1" is the original, and "Dream Warriors" is probably the best (major soft spot for that one, too), but "New Nightmare" will always be my sentimental favorite.