Ghostface Headspace

This week, a 90s classic, an indie horror hit, and Bleak Week! Spoilers below.

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

◆ Scream, dir. Wes Craven, 1996.

Two-tone terror. Scream stands out in the cultural imagination as a seminal meta-horror movie—a knowing, winking slasher about slashers. And it is that. Some of its moods and moments channel Woodsboro's legion of callous teens, all having a little too much fun with the wave of murders plaguing their community. And yet, a rewatch is a reminder that this tone is balanced by another, somber one. The violence in Scream is real, visceral, and horrifying. Its approach to final girl Sidney's traumatic backstory is sensitive and sincere. Scream is a satire and a genre exercise, but it takes itself seriously too. There are stakes here, even if we're having a lot of silly fun.

Tension. Kevin Williamson's script underscores a tension in horror writing when Billy, revealed as a killer and questioned by Sidney, at first attempts to dodge the question of motive. ". . . [I]t's a lot scarier," he says,"when there’s no motive . . . ." He's right. The motiveless killer engenders a special sort of dread. Michael Myers kills because he's a killer. He's an avatar of malice uncontained by reason. Billy does have a motive though, and it neatly ties in with Sidney's tragic backstory. This makes for a satisfying ending by traditional standards. But the reveal and explanation, which became a baked in feature of the Scream franchise, does drain away some of the terrible, dread-generating mystique of Ghostface. You can have, it would seem, pure slasher terror, or you can have the mystery reveal itself. By the third act, you can't have both.