So I have a love/hate thing with Wes Craven. I think “Nightmare on Elm Street” is the greatest horror film ever made and maybe one of the greatest conceits in horror. I also liked Craven’s “Last House on the Left.”
But he’s been involved with some real stinkers: “Red Eye”, “They”, and as I have mentioned here, “The Girl in the Photograph.”
Craven’s best known work is “Scream”, the meta-horror film that launched a series that continues to this day. For a long time, this success baffled me. I saw “Scream” when it came out in 1996 and remember being distinctly underwhelmed. It just didn’t have the bite (or perhaps slash) of “Nightmare…” The characters seemed basically dorky and uncharismatic. The plot meandered.
However, I rewatched it recently, and my opinion changed… somewhat.
The opening sequence with Drew Barrymore is terrific—one of the best starts to a horror film ever. And the “meta-horror” storyline in which characters discuss the rules of survival in a horror film… well, it struck me as more clever and less cute than the first time I watched it.
When I finished the film, I was thinking, “that wasn’t bad.”
But as the days went on, several things bugged me. Why did the killer do what they did? Why did they target the people they killed?
A reason is given, but it doesn’t really add up. “Nightmare…” delivered its story in a neat package with a bow; it made sense: Freddy Krueger is getting his revenge by targeting the children of the parents who killed him. (I know that’s a spoiler, but really, if you haven’t seen the film by now, you deserve it.)
“Scream” lacks that cohesion, that tidiness.
I’ll finish this by noting I did see “Scream II” a couple nights after I wrote this and really loved it. I’ll doubtless plow through the rest in coming months.
