Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream 4

Hey, I just realized I watched and wrote about 32 horror movies this month instead of 31. So now we're in bonus time! Although I guess technically a bunch of the posts were about TV episodes and/or segments of episodes, so I guess it's fair.

Now for the last film Craven ever directed: 2010's SCREAM 4, released about a decade after the last sequel. This time Kevin Williamson came back, and it kind of shows, though this was not the franchise-saver that the filmmakers and fans probably wanted.

 

This flick brings us back to where it all began, sleepy small town Woodsboro where David Arquette is now a bumbling sheriff and Courteney Cox is now married to him. She has writer's block! But Neve Campbell does not have writer's block. Because she has finished a self help book and is now on a book tour – last stop… WOODSBORO!

 

Also it's the anniversary of the murders from the first movie.

 

We meet a new crop of teenagers led by Campbell's never-before-mentioned cousin (Emma Roberts). There's Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin and Erik Knudsen as the resident horror film buffs and Nico Tortorella as Roberts' estranged boyfriend.

 

The bodies start piling up, everyone starts wondering who is doing it, etc.

 

The movie opens with a series of "gotcha" "scares" as we quickly learn there have been way more STAB movies than SCREAM movies in the intervening 10 years, with only the first 3 being based on the original "true life" murders and the rest getting crazier and crazier. During this sequence we get a staggering number of cameos of all of the actresses offed in the various openings of the various STAB movies, including Kristen Bell and Lucy Hale.

 

I guess this is Williamson's attempt to outdo the meta-ness of the other flicks but like the movies-within-the-movie in both SCREAM 2 and SCREAM 3, it seems like a wasted opportunity. We're shown this stuff but what are we supposed to do with it? What's it mean?

 

This time out Williamson attempts to school us on some "new" horror rules (they all seem made up to me and not based on real movies) as well as the rules of a "remake" (although this is not a remake). Enough has happened in the realm of horror in the last 10 years that I think Williamson and Craven could have probably come up with something clever – references to torture porn flicks or Japanese horror or something. I guess CABIN IN THE WOODS basically already skewered all that stuff so there's not much left for SCREAM 4 to take on, other than maybe itself, which it pretends to but doesn't.

 

One way this could have worked would have been to go fully insane and make it a literal remake of SCREAM. Then, talking about remakes would make sense. Maybe the characters have even seen the original movie. So it's not slasher clichés they're familiar with so much as the specifics of an actual movie.

 

Or, this would be funny. There's copycat crimes inspired by the movie SCREAM. So, in a sense, the crimes are the "remake." But it's been over 10 years since the original film so none of the teens even know what the fuck it is. Some nerd has to be like, "Wait, this is like that movie SCREAM," and then everyone else goes, "What movie?"

 

Anyway – that's it for CRAVENFEST. SCREAM 4 is not Craven's best work, but it's way better than his worst and it's cool that he kept creative control of this series, instead of the insanity that went down with the NIGHTMARE flicks. He didn't quite get the chance to reinvent horror for a fourth decade, but he definitely made his mark.

 

You might notice I skipped some movies. The best of these is THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW. I didn't watch it just because I've seen it before, but it's super awesome. I also didn't watch RED EYE since I've seen it before, and it was fine. I skipped NIGHT VISIONS because I'd seen it and because it sucked.

 

Craven had a really interesting career. Basically three big spikes in popularity, with spotty films in between. It's not every guy you find making a made for TV movie right after a huge game changer. Then again, it's not every guy who changes the game three different times in as many decades. The thing is, with the exception of CHILLER, all these movies are pretty entertaining, they're all imaginative and they all have some legitimate scares.

 

Happy Halloween! Time to go watch MUSIC OF THE HEART.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream 3

By the time SCREAM 3 came out in 2000, I was in college and had a couple years of freelance movie reviewing for the McMinnville News Register under my belt, so I can proudly say I was paid to see this movie. I also saw it at the McMinnville Cinema 8 (now 10) that I was paid to help build. So I got paid to watch a movie in a theater I was paid to help build. I was going to just re-print my News Register review and interject with my current thoughts when necessary, but I reread the review and it is God awful and embarrassing. So, I won't be doing that. WHO DID I THINK I WAS?! A little prick I guess.

So, Craven's back on board for SCREAM 3 but we've lost Williamson who has been replaced by Ehren Kruger (hehe) a writer who went on to write terrible things like TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN and TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON.

This time out, people connected with the production of the movie-within-the-movie, STAB 3, are being murdered. This includes Liev Schriber (a holdover I forgot to mention from the previous movies) and Jenny McCarthy (a woman who would prefer children die of preventable diseases rather than get life saving vaccinations). The movie's director, Scott Foley, is pissed that the bad publicity is shutting down his production. The movie's stars (Emily Mortimer and Parker Posey among them) are also not happy.

David Arquette has gone from bumbling deputy to bumbling bodyguard and boy toy of movie star Parker Posey who is playing Courteney Cox's character. Courteney Cox is drawn to the murders, of course, and gets all jealous about this whole situation.

You might notice there's not much Neve Campbell talk, yet. That's because she's not in this movie very much. Her character has retreated to a house in the wilderness where she spends her time alone, working for a women's crisis hotline. To be honest I kind of can't remember why she ends up going to Hollywood to hang around the scene(s) of the murder(s), and I just watched this movie a couple days ago. Anyway, she shows up and the gang's back together.

This is probably the worst film of the series, and I guess you could make the argument that that is because Williamson is not behind the scenes. The movie is well directed and well acted, but it just feels kinda lifeless. It continues down the path of settling for normal slasher status, rather than subverting anything. There's a painful cameo from Jamie Kennedy's character in which he explains the conventions of trilogies, but the scene is contrived, feels shoehorned and lacks the effortlessness of Williamson's more assured fanboy dialogue.

Once again, it's a mystery, but once again, basically anyone could be the killer because once again we don't know much about any of the new characters. I guess my favorite of the new characters is probably Parker Posey as the actress hired to play Courteney Cox's character, but I think this is largely just because it happens to be Parker Posey and she's hard not to like. Still, she does have chemistry with Courteney Cox, and the scenes in which the two of them are sleuthing things out have more energy than most of the rest of the movie, including a moment in which they run into Carrie Fisher for some reason.

So anyway, I said this is probably the worst SCREAM flick but guess what? It's way better than the worst NIGHTMARE flick, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream 2

Unlike the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series, Craven directed every one of the SCREAM sequels, including part 2, which is probably the best of them, but still a sharp drop off after the original.

I was 17 by the time this movie came out, so no more family time for me: I saw this one at the Mac Tri with my hetero life mate David Toth. I've seen many glorious movies at the Mac Tri with David, including the all-time comedy classic SON IN LAW and the obscure minor success, TITANIC. All joking aside, though, 97 was a great year for movie-going with David because we were both 17 and able to go to movies like JACKIE BROWN, THE BIG LEBOWSKI and U-TURN without parental guidance.

Anyway, Williamson is back as screenwriter as well, and this time goes all meta on the subject of sequels. Unfortunately SCREAM 2 suffers from the fact that SCREAM had already come along and shaken everything up – so all the in-movie talk about the conventions of sequels, and the story's attempt to subvert these, isn't as entertaining or fresh or funny as the first time out.

This time Neve Campbell's in college, along with Jamie Kennedy, and copycat killings start up, targeting Campbell's friends (including Sarah Michelle Gellar). This brings Courteney Cox and David Arquette to the campus. They had a budding romance in the first movie and are now on the outs. I wonder if it will work out?

The biggest strengths of this movie are when it works like the original. Probably the biggest weakness is that it kind of seems to be all over the place. It starts off with a self-contained scene, like the first movie, about a couple who goes out to see the movie within this movie that was made based on the events of the first movie, STAB. The couple is played by Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps, and Williamson takes the chance to give their characters some dialogue about racism and stereotyping in horror flicks. They make some good points, but to what end? None of this stuff ends up really being dramatized or addressed or fixed throughout the movie. They just bring it up and move on.

Additionally, the whole opening sequence is weird. The movie theater is out of control – the moviegoers are jumping up and down, dancing in the aisles, screaming, cheering. Both Pinkett and Epps get up and go in and out of the movie multiple times within the first few minutes of it starting. What universe does this take place in? I mean I saw O at the Ontario Mills one time and that was a huge mistake, but it wasn't nearly as bad as this free-for-all.

Later, we get to Courteney Cox's cameraman who is the stereotypical "fraidy cat." This is fine and everything except he's also played by a black actor, Duane Martin. So after the opening conversation about black stereotypes in horror movies, what are we supposed to think about this guy?

There are also wasted opportunities with the movie-within-a-movie concept. We see several clips from STAB, which are basically parodying familiar scenes from the original SCREAM, and they're re-cast with actors like Heather Graham, Tori Spelling and Luke Wilson. These scenes are mildly amusing but they seem like they could have been something more, in a movie that's about movies. SCREAM 2 seems more timid and afraid to go into the meta territories of SCREAM and NEW NIGHTMARE, and more content to just be a slasher.

Aside from these cameos, there are a million others, including my boy Joshua Jackson, and an extensive cast of both newcomers at the time and old hands including Timothy Olyphant and Laurie Metcalf. Everyone does great work, and again, anyone could be the killer, but the mystery is not as compelling this time because the script is thin when it comes to character development.

I read a little bit about the making of this flick and discovered that the original script was leaked shortly before or maybe even during production, so Williamson rewrote it and shuffled around characters so that the surprises would still be intact. This meant changing who kills and gets killed. This might be the reason why the whole thing seems so arbitrary. It works okay when it's dealing with the characters from the first movie, but isn't very interesting when it's dealing with the new blood.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream

Now we move on to Craven's second biggest claim to fame, 1996's SCREAM, the movie that single-handedly brought the horror genre back to life while also holding a satirical mirror up to it. Written by fledgling screenwriter Kevin Williamson, SCREAM was notable for being the first slasher flick where the teenage slasher victims had seen OTHER slasher flicks and knew the rules of the game. Even the killer was in on the joke.

Like I said before, SCREAM was such a huge mainstream success that even non-horror fans were into it, and I even went to see it at the theater with my whole family which was unheard of for this type of movie. So Craven cemented his status as an influential horror filmmaker over 3 decades: first in the 70s with exploitation fare like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES, then in the 80s with the most famous face of modern horror, Freddy Krueger, in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and finally in the 90s with SCREAM.

For about a decade after SCREAM's release you probably can't find a single horror movie that isn't directly influenced by it, which is funny, since SCREAM itself is directly influenced by the history of horror that preceded it. In that sense it's kinda like PULP FICTION – that flick came along in the mid-90s, aping other flicks that had come before it, and then single-handedly defined much of indie (and mainstream) cinema for the next decade or so.

But enough about the legacy – how's the movie? It's good. It starts off with a  super awesome sequence in which Drew Barrymore is stalked over the phone by a killer who quizzes her on scary movies, and then moves right into the story of Neve Campbell and her friends as they're similarly stalked by the same killer.

Courteney Cox is on hand as a tabloid reporter looking to exploit the killings for her own gain and David Arquette rounds out the cast as a bumbling deputy who is a joke around town but takes his job very seriously.

Probably the most entertaining character, though, is the video store clerk by day, film buff by night played by Jamie Kennedy. He basically works as writer Kevin Williamson's voice in the film, directly commenting on the dos and don'ts of slasher flicks. This commentary is both funny and insightful, and serves to pull the rug out from under what would otherwise by a tired retread.

But that's not all that SCREAM has going for it in the meta department: Craven shoots and constructs scenes in such a way that the very shot composition starts its own satirical commentary on the events as they unfold. Craven had some practice with NEW NIGHTMARE, and on top of that was reportedly becoming tired of the violence and misogyny of the slasher genre, so SCREAM must have come at the perfect time for him.

Aside from all of this, one interesting thing about SCREAM is that the killer is pretty human. I won't give away who the killer is, in case you haven't seen the movie, but that's another strength: it's a mystery. In most of the NIGHTMARES and FRIDAYS and HALLOWEENS, we know who the killer is. The suspense, if any, is just about who's going to get killed and how. In SCREAM, part of the plot involves trying to figure out who the killer is. Because of this, the killer is not some supernatural entity, but a real person who can be knocked down and outsmarted. That's a refreshing change of pace.

I forgot to mention the rest of the cast. Skeet Ulrich makes a nice Johnny Depp circa-NIGHTMARE replacement as Campbell's love interest, Matthew Lillard goes WAY above and beyond as the local rich kid and Rose McGowan brings a lot of personality to a spunky best friend character. Even Henry Winkler's on board as the school principal.

Craven would go on to make several more films after this one, but SCREAM was really his last masterpiece. But that's great – not many directors get to redefine an entire genre that they helped create and prove themselves the master 3 decades after they got started.

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Finally, after a long hiatus, Wes Craven has returned to rescue us from the continual march into awfulness that is the NIGHTMARE sequels with 1994's WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE. Get ready: shit's about to get meta.

So apparently Craven had this idea for NIGHTMARE 3 but wasn't given the greenlight to go ahead with it until the franchise was all but dead. Heather Langenkamp returns to star as… HERSELF! You see, this flick takes place in "the real world" where Langenkamp starred in NIGHTMARE. Now it's 10 years later and she's set to appear on a talk show to discuss the legacy of the film. In conjunction with that, real-life producer Bob Shaye wants to talk to her about a new NIGHTMARE script real-life director Wes Craven wants to cast her in. Even John Saxon and Robert Englund are on hand… as themselves!

Unfortunately, all is not well. Langenkamp is getting prank calls from a Krueger-quoting apparent NIGHTMARE fan, her kid (Miko Hughes) is having nightmares, and earthquakes are rocking Los Angeles. Before she can even get out the door in the morning she has to deal with all of these obstacles.

Since this is a NIGHTMARE movie it's only a matter of time before Freddy shows up. Spoiler alert: turns out there's actually an ancient demon that was satisfied with appearing as Freddy in the NIGHTMARE movies, but now that the movie are over he's growing restless and trying to break into the real world to do some real damage.

Freddy himself goes back to being frightening in this flick – he still gets in a couple one-liners, but his whole character design and the way Craven shoots him takes him back to the realm of terror. He's still the same recognizable character, but now he has a long black trenchcoat that makes him look more cool and less cartoon, and a newly designed bladed hand that is more menacing than the glove we've grown accustomed too. He's also used more sparingly here, more like the original film than its sequels, with Craven saving the majority of his appearances for the grand finale, and even then, allowing silhouettes reminiscent of NOSFERATU to do some of the work for him. Craven's also wise to bring in fairy tale elements, likening Freddy's luring of children to their doom to the witch from Hansel and Gretel.

This is a great premise for the sequel, especially for a franchise that has been done to death, and a very adventurous, cool route to go. Instead of thinking, "It's the seventh movie, we better play it safe and give people what they expect" they do the exact opposite – "Hey man. It's seven movies. Who gives a fuck. Let's get crazy."

Craven comes back in a big way, showing the makers of the various sequels exactly what they did wrong and how it could have been done better. The dream sequences are classically creepy, Langenkamp's lead performance is great, the special effects are top notch, Freddy is more Krueger than ever and even all the non-professional actors like Shaye and Craven himself get the job done.

This movie clearly set the stage for what was to come shortly for Craven – the SCREAM series, taking the idea of the slasher movie within a slasher movie to the next level.

Of course, there was one last sequel to NIGHTMARE, the crossover FREDDY VS. JASON. I saw that movie back when it came out, and remember it as being a lot of fun and, while not as ambitious as the original NIGHTMARE flick or NEW NIGHTMARE, at least not as offensive or tone deaf as the worst of the sequels. Still, I won't be watching or reviewing it for CRAVENFEST this year because it's time to move on.

Same for the NIGHTMARE remake – I'm curious to see what it's like, but I haven't heard good things, and there are only so many days left until Halloween!

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

And now we reach the nadir of the series. 1991's FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE is terrible. It also makes no sense. The movie is notable for being the only NIGHTMARE flick (and one of the few slashers) directed by a woman, Rachel Talalay. Unfortunately it's not notable for anything else.

 

Where do I even start with this one? An opening title crawl lets us know it's now 10 years in the future and there are no kids left in Springwood because Freddy has killed all of them. How we got there from the last movie is beyond me. In any case, after that we're treated to possibly the dumbest dream sequence yet as a kid played by Shon Greenblatt is dropped from an airplane before seeing Freddy Krueger riding on a broomstick and dressed as the wicked witch.

 

So, it's not Freddy's greatest moment. None of this movie is Freddy's greatest moment. Poor bastard (son of 100 maniacs).

 

This kid played by Greenblatt doesn't know who he is or where he came from and ends up in an orphanage run by Lisa Zane and Yaphet "Across 110th Street" Kotto. Zane figures out Greenblatt has some connection to Springwood, so she takes him on a road trip to check it out.

 

Some of the orphans stow away and come along for the ride to up the body count – Breckin Meyer as a stoner, Ricky Dean Logan as an abuse victim with hearing impairment and Lezlie Deane as a victim of sexual abuse by her father. So with this dark subject matter you can see that it's totally appropriate when Freddy shows up and starts chewing scenery.

 

The most painful sequence involves Freddy torturing the hearing impaired kid, but he moves on later to make the sex abuse victim relive her trauma as well. So it's a fun night at the movies. The only sequence that's not offensive on moral grounds is the one in which Krueger murders Breckin Meyer by video-gaming him to death, but that one's offensive on another level. An artistic one.

 

The climax of the movie was meant to be seen in 3D. You can tell by the way Yaphet Kotto hands our heroine a pair of 3D glasses to wear.

 

The only joke that works in this flick is the one where Johnny Depp (God bless his soul) shows up on TV in a "this is your brain on drugs" ad. But that's promptly ruined by Freddy butting in.

 

Perhaps the only redeeming quality of this flick is the additional glimpses we get at Freddy's history. So now we know his nun mom was raped by 100 maniacs, he was abused by his stepfather, made fun of by his classmates (because he's certifiably insane), and killed his wife in front of his… daughter! He has a daughter! Who could it be?

 

If you guessed Breckin Meyer guess again. No, it's not Yaphet Kotto, either.

 

Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

The series continues its descent with this 1989 entry. Wilcox returns, marking the second entry for her.

The film starts off on a gruesome note with Wilcox hallucinating/dreaming herself into the role of Freddy's mother on the worst day of her life: the day she was locked into the mental institution and raped by everyone.

This bit of unpleasantness keeps popping up, continuing with an equally gruesome "birth" scene in which Wilcox hallucinates/dreams herself giving birth to some kind of Freddy/goblin baby, in the same mental institution.

Like some of the other movies in this series, this movie's biggest struggle is with tone. It wants Freddy to be kind of a funny antihero but also wants to be a gory, scary movie. So, the dream sequences have gone back to being dark and disgusting, like in the originals, but Freddy continues down the path of being a clown.

Wilcox once again has a whole new set of teen friends (she makes a new set of friends each year as her previous friends get killed off, but the movie doesn't acknowledge this, just expects us to accept it). Once again, her whole new set of friends is less likable than the last one. This is where things get problematic with slasher flicks: are they supposed to be unlikable so that we're happy when they get graphically murdered? If so, fuck that shit.

Either I wasn't paying close enough attention due to boredom or this movie makes no sense, but there was a little bit of a plot about Krueger's plans to somehow impregnate Wilcox and make her have his demon baby. Or something like that. I’m not quite clear on it.