Reviewed by Geno McGahee
“Looks like you fingered the wrong guy.” – Killer
The 1990s was not a good time for horror, but if there was one film that defined it, it would be SCREAM, a 1996 flick, written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven. It was a whodunit with a unique storyline, actually using “the rules” of horror movies as the driving force.
We begin with Drew Barrymore as Casey a “teenager” that is home and cooking some popcorn when she gets a call from a creepy voice and then the game begins. She is asked some horror trivia questions and when she gets them wrong, she and her man gets gutted. It was a great beginning. The actual beginning of this film is one of the better ones in horror history.
A “ghost faced” killer is now taking off and targeting 30 something high schoolers, and terrorizing the small town. The center of the killer’s attention seems to be Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a teen that suffered through tragedy before. Her mother was butchered a year prior to the murders began. Due to this, she will not give her boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) any loving. Well, she gives him a “PG-13 relationship.” She flashes him her boobs…how’s that gonna help? She sent the poor guy away with blue balls. PG-13 relationships suck!
Billy’s annoying buddy Stuart (Matthew Lillard) is dating the super hot Tatum (Rose McGowan) and they have the “can’t get laid” friend that we all have, Randy (Jamie Kennedy). He works at a video store….oh do I miss video stores…the good ones. Blockbuster and Hollywood Video never had a good horror selection but these mom and pop shops always had obscure horror. Now they have this streaming shit and Redbox….I don’t like the way that this video world is going!
Sidney, on top of dealing with the death of her mother, she is also dealing with the ghost faced killer that tried to end it, leading her to “finger” her boyfriend. On top of that, she must deal with Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), a sensationalistic journalist that believes that the wrong guy is in prison for the death of Sidney’s mother.
Tatum’s brother Dewey (David Arquette) is part of the problem as well as he begins a romantic relationship with Weathers, allowing her access to many things that she wouldn’t typically have. With all this man fingering going on, you would think that Dewey would pass on some loving, but he rolled the dice and gave it a go.
A party would be the final act of the film and the death count rises and the great reveal occurs. SCREAM is a great movie for its time, but is not an all time great movie. It was unique and sent horror into a new and not so good direction. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and URBAN LEGEND both capitalized on the popularity of SCREAM and even worse, we were cursed with two follow ups, SCREAM 2 and 3, and to give you a sign of how absolutely terrible these two were, one of them featured Jay and Silent Bob.
With SCREAM 4 on the horizon, the hopes are low for a good movie, but they have had over ten years to think about it and maybe we will get something decent out of it. I doubt it, but we’ll see.
Scared Stiff Rating: 7.5/10. They Fingered the Right Movie
