Classic Movie Review: Scream (1996)

Wes Craven's Scream was known for revitalising the horror genre. It came after a decade of a cheap horror flicks a that took themselves way too seriously. The self referential nature of the movie combined with Wes Craven's own history with the genre brought a new element to horror films that is still a big part of the genre today. Twenty years later, the movie is still terrifying despite the fact that it is an incredibly 90s movie.

One night, teenager Casey (Drew Barrymore) is settling in to watch a horror movie when she gets a mysterious phone call toying with her, asking her to name her scary movie. More than just a prank call, a killer shows up and murders both Casey and her boyfriend. These murders petrify the town of Woodsboro and in particular Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who is still reeling after the brutal rape and murder of her mother a year earlier. As more murders happen, everyone ends up being a suspect. It turns out that the killers are following the rules that are set out in horror movies for who gets killed.

The best part about Scream (and it's sequels and recent Netflix series) is that you don't know who the killers are until the end of the movie. There are multiple suspects, everyone from Sidney's boyfriend Billy to the horror obsessed Randy. Spoiler alert: it ends up being both Billy and his friend Stu who are obsessed with horror movies and taking revenge for what has happened in the past. This is the second most reason for why it is so terrifying. These aren't unstoppable supernatural beings like Freddy or Jason, they're teenagers who have taken their love of horror movies to an extreme level. Skeet Ulrich (who plays Billy) is legitimately scary as this super serious psychopath and Matthew Lillard (Stu) is this weirdo who just loves to play games. Interesting side note: Skeet Ulrich was actually cast in this movie because he looked exactly like Johnny Depp in the first Nightmare on Elm Street. The final scene in which these two characters end up stabbing each other to make it seem like they are victims is both terrifying and darkly funny. 

Scream's multiple references to other horror movies would be considered cheap these days (the Scary Movie franchise definitely made that a reality), but these references work so well here. That primarily has to do with the fact that it uses them in its story. The rules of horror movies (and variations of them) that are set out in this movie have been used so many times in other movies that they have become a parody in and of themselves. In other movies they are used almost as a joke or a shorthand that most movie fans will know them without realising it.

Ghostface doing his thing

The only thing that doesn't work (and it's not really the fault of the movie) is that the technology has dated quite a bit. There is a lot of talk of cellular telephones as though they are a fad that is about is very comical. All the video cassettes is also very humourous. This has been made up for in the following movies, which update the technology accordingly and the recent Netflix series even introduces smartphones and gifs to the horror equation. In any other movie that would be irrelevant but in this movie franchise technology is key.

Despite having spawned a huge number of sequels, spin-offs and parodies, Scream is still a super scary and original movie. While sequels are generally considered bad, Scream 2 is just as a good, with Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant and Liev Schreiber bringing some really good acting to the series. This first one however is a must watch.

Black Mass

South Boston, or 'Southie', has been the subject of many a crime film over the past decade and a half. Movies like The Town, Southie, The Departed and even Good Will Hunting have striven to accurately portray one of the roughest neighbourhoods in the United States. But one notorious figure has yet to be portrayed on film; that of James 'Whitey' Bulger (Okay so not necessarily true, Martin Scorsese's The Departed was based on his crimes).

Bulger (Johnny Depp) is the leader of the Winter Hill Gang in South Boston during the mid-1970s. He is well known in the community as both a gangster and a pillar of the community. His brother Billy (Benedict Cumberbatch), a state senator, is contacted by their childhood friend John Connelly (Joel Edgerton), who is now a FBI agent who has been tasked with reducing Mafia activity in Boston. He sees Bulger as the key to bringing down this stranglehold they have. So Bulger becomes an informant, all the while continuing his own criminal activity.

This success of this film hinges entirely on whether or not you find Depp's performance as Bulger convincing. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't convinced. Yes, he is unnerving, but I wasn't scared by him, which is the whole point. I think that they were relying on his makeup and new look to add to the performance but it did nothing for me. Outside of this, there isn't too much going on. At a stretch you could say that the intrigue surrounding Bulger's manipulation of the FBI is interesting, but not enough to be exciting.

In fact the film seems like it purposefully goes out of its way to be obtuse. There is a whole subplot involving who owns World Jai-Alai, a sport the movie even admits no one knows what it is (unless you're like me and you do know what it is (I lie, I have no idea what they're doing)). I also feel like this film is needlessly violent. I know Whitey Bulger was an incredibly psychotic film, but you don't need to show every single murder he committed. Sometimes implied violence is just as effective. I also feel like the movie dropped the ball with the ending. It is a well known fact that Bulger was apprehended in 2011, yet the film ends in 1995 with an epilogue about his capture.

Because Depp's performance is so dominant here that the others don't really get a look in. Joel Edgerton's is the only one that is on par with Depp, but it isn't very good. Everyone else is really in the background which is disappointing considering the cast. Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Adam Scott and Rory Cochrane are all fantastic actors, and while they are in a lot of scenes, they aren't the focus of any of them. Corey Stoll is the only minor performance given any notice, which is good because he carries those scenes. Women are hugely under represented with Dakota Johnson and Julianne Nicholson given barely any screen time.

A hugely disappointing and largely unnecessary biopic. It is not at all engaging, so if you want to see a better film about Whitey Bulger, go rewatch The Departed.

Wild

Last year I reviewed the Aussie film Tracks, a film about a girl with a rough background walking across the desert. This week I watched Wild, a film about a girl with a rough background walking the Pacific Crest Trail, a hike that goes from Mexico to Canada. Like with Tracks, Jean-Marc Vallée's latest film didn't really inspire me the way these films are supposed to.

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) is a wreck after the death of her mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) and divorces her husband Paul (Thomas Sadoski) after he finds that she's cheated on him. To get her life back on track, Cheryl decides to walk the Pacific Crest Trail. Along the way she meets a fair few people who she relates to, as well as some unsavoury characters who just want to use her.

While I appreciate the film's overall message (despite it not doing anything to me), I feel like Vallée's filmmaking is all over the place here. The structure and editing don't do much help make sense of the story. Non-linear films can be fun to watch and sometimes they can give backstory to characters, as is the intention with this film. However, the flashbacks that we do see are very fragmented and brief, giving only a cursory insight to Cheryl's motivations and thus not making her a very endearing character.

The film suffers from an overabundance of narration. Scenes where we should read into Witherspoon's performance are interrupted by obvious narration of what's going on in her mind. The film's epilogue is also rushed along with a solid minute monologue at the end of the film, felt like something a teenager would write at the end of a story to let the reader know that everything would be okay. This could have been cut out entirely and given time for the audience to breathe and come to their own conclusions on whether Cheryl achieved her redemption.

Thematically the film is very much on the nose, holding hands with the audience the entire time. Such is the nature of a poorly done CGI fox who represents the soul of her mother and you know this from the moment you see it. Also, whilst I am not one of those hideous men's rights people and I fully support feminist films (and this is a great example of one, up there perhaps with Jackie Brown), every man, bar her brother and ex-husband, comes across like they wish to take advantage of Cheryl and I truly was scared for her at times. I don't feel like this needed to happen every time to remind the audience that there is that fear that Cheryl carries with her.

With this being a film with a lone main character, I had expected to see Witherspoon for the entire film. She gives a superb performance, something I haven't seen her do since Pleasantville. The fact that there are too little supporting roles, or if there are, they aren't in it for long, that irked me a little. Laura Dern comes back time and time again in the flashbacks, but I didn't feel a strong connection to her. Thomas Sadoski and Gaby Hoffman, who plays Cheryl's friend, both get a pitiful amount of screen time and I would have loved to see a lot more of W. Earl Brown.

Jean-Marc Vallée is capable of making better movies as we saw with Dallas Buyers Club and I know that all the actors can do better than this and despite this movie having some Oscar nominations based on it's strong female characters, it isn't a too exciting movie.