the downfall of scream, The Simultaneously Best & Worst Movie Series of All Time Scream 2 is actually pretty decent. It follows Sidney through her first year of college, where she is terrorized by another mystery killer. The film is a little disappointing because it doesn’t really add anything or build on its excellent predecessor. However, as a standalone slasher movie it checks all the boxes— jump scares, suspenseful chase scenes, and a mysterious masked villain— and is ultimately perfectly satisfactory. Some of the elements that made the first film so effective are echoed, but in their second rendition they no longer feel fresh and innovative. Some of the most shocking moments are ones that don’t really work— aspects of the finale feel a little too unrealistic, with reveals coming from seemingly out of nowhere. There are positive elements like the continued self-awareness, but even that starts to fall flat as the overthe-top moments begin to overtake the selfaware ones. This film marks the start of the Scream franchise’s eroding balance between parody and cliché.
SHANNON O ’ SHEA
Rarely have I endured such a wild cinematic ride as my recent viewing of all four films of the Scream franchise. I’ve made my way through a number of other sagas, namely Harry Potter, The Avengers, and most recently, the absolute gem that is Twilight. But nothing quite compares to the combination of soaring highs and bizarre, intense lows that comprises the Scream series. The series’ first entry, an innovative fusion of slasher film and dark comedy, is legitimately good. It follows Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her high school peers being targeted by a masked serial killer. It’s iconic for good reason. It’s an effective horror movie, delivering solidly on scares and plot twists, and simultaneously a successful critique of the genre. Utilizing the perspective of filmbro Randy (Jamie Kennedy), Scream takes us through a checklist of slasher-movie tropes, describing them even as they happen on screen. It’s scary, fun, surprising, and clever—I won’t spoil it for those who don’t yet know about the ending, but it takes the genre in a creative new direction, one which I’m surprised other slasher films hadn’t really ventured into before. The acting is solid, the plot is occasionally over-the-top but still overall believable, and the element of parody elevates it beyond many other entries in its genre. One scene that comes to mind is the party scene, in which the characters laugh about the predictability of slasher films and Randy explains the “rules” for surviving one. The teens carry on, conscious of the fact that they are breaking all those rules, but unaware that the killer is in the house with them. Scream has just the right amount of selfawareness, with its more outlandish or clichéd moments balanced perfectly by the tonguein-cheek ones that explicitly reference their own cliché-ness. To be honest, I recommend all four Scream films, but this is probably the only one I recommend unironically as a legitimately good film.
I won’t try too hard to sugarcoat what comes next. Scream 3 is a bad movie. However, I am not by any means saying it isn’t enjoyable. It’s extremely enjoyable! It’s campy, bizarre, fun, and often unintentionally hilarious. It’s probably the most meta of all the Scream films, which is saying a lot (Scream 4 is also in the running for that designation, but we’ll get to that later). In this film, the events of Scream have inspired a film series called Stab, and the characters from Scream are now being portrayed by actors in a movie-withina-movie about the events of the first Scream movie. Confused yet? The premise is definitely fun. The film is deliciously self-referential. Patrick Dempsey is also there, for some reason. Scream 3 has many elements of a good movie, yet it falls extremely short. Things get way too over-the-top, with explosions, a borderline absurd killer reveal, and David Arquette somehow still not dying. Again, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. And laughing at it. But it is not a good movie. Next we’ve got Scream 4, the franchise reboot, released 11 years after Scream 3
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