Six sequels in, it’s easy to forget that the first Scream was a slow starter: released on December 20, 1996, it took four weeks to reach number one at the domestic box office, and most people saw it for the first time in 1997, whether in theaters or on the bestselling videotape (released in multiple “collector’s editions” with variable covers). When Scream 2 opened wide on December 12, 1997, the first Scream was still playing in several markets; forget about that summer, when the sequel was being shot and its various endings, some legit and some decoys, kept getting leaked on the internet. Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were at their wits’ end, while Dimension Films head Bob Weinstein was eager to capitalize on the surprising success of Scary Movie, which he retitled Scream at the last minute to the objection of everyone involved. Four years after Scream, Dimension released the horror parody Scary Movie, launching another franchise that’s endured alongside Scream.
If the Scream series is reliable but no longer ambitious, it’s because the filmmakers prematurely burned out in Scream 2. Jamie Kennedy never should’ve died, let alone in the second movie. His character, horror expert Randy, turns the first two movies into a running commentary on itself; without him, Scream 3 went directly to Hollywood to continue playing with the meta elements of the previous films. But after that, Scream became just another horror franchise, comfortable but no longer innovative. Instead of film as a medium and its cliches, Scream revolves around its “Final Girl” just like everything else.
The opening sequences, so important to the first two films, have all been letdowns. The first scene in Scream 2 might be the best in the entire series: Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett Smith play a couple on a date at the movies; they’re seeing Stab, a horror film based on the events of the first Scream. Tori Spelling plays Neve Campbell, just like the latter predicted; fans run amok in the theater wearing giveaway Ghostface masks, mock-stabbing each other with glowing plastic knives. Pinkett Smith gets impatient with the movie, and Epps gets up to go to the bathroom. It’s a mess in the lobby, too—you’d think more people would be in the theater on opening weekend—but there’s only a few people in the bathroom. Epps goes into a stall, and hears someone, or something, making frightened, crazed noises in the next stall over. He puts his ear to the divider, and the real Ghostface—this movie’s killer—stabs him in the ear. It’s a horrifying and gruesome death, but controlled and not at all over the top like so many contemporary kills.
The masked killer makes his way back to the seat next to Pinkett Smith, and after giving her the silent treatment for a bit, he stabs her over and over in the stomach, while the audience cheers at the scream, oblivious to the real horror among them. She gets up, slowly makes her way to the screen, and makes it to the front before she cries out at the audience, cheering, and collapses dead in her place. Cut to black—SCREAM 2.
More specific references appear further into the film: a forgettable exchange between Campbell and Skeet Ulrich from the first Scream is recreated shot for shot, word for word by Spelling and Luke Wilson in a scene from Stab excerpted on a faux-Siskel & Ebert program. At first, the scene is used diegetically, playing on a TV in the campus cafeteria, but after a few lines, we cut directly to Stab as if we’re now watching the film-within-a-film.
Besides all the money, these movies were able to play with audience perception and awareness in ways that few films have since, big or small. But that ended a long time ago, and the movies haven’t. Scream 7 was fine and nothing more. I doubt next month’s Scary Movie will move the series forward, either.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM