Scream: Not Just Another Horror Film

            With every horror movie I’ve watched there always seemed to be similar pattern that they all followed.  Randy Meeks even identifies the rules within the movie, which are as follows: Rule number one: you can never have sex. Sex equals death in a horror film.  Rule number two: you can never drink or do drugs because it is a sin.  Finally, rule number three: never say, “I’ll be right back”, because you won’t come back.  The movie Scream intentionally identifies these rules and then breaks them.  Thus taking this horror movie to a whole-new level when compared to all its predecessors.  Although, it does have similar uses of weapons, killer personality/back story, a terrible place, and the focus on the female victims it still provides its own twist compared to other horror films. 

This movie starts out with a girl, Casey Becker, home alone when out of the blue the phone rings.  She just assumes that it is a wrong number but it turns out to be the killer.  He tortures her with the sight of her injured boyfriend and then ends up killing her and stringing her up a tree.  Then the same peculiar telephone situation happens to Sidney Prescott, and then she is attacked.  The town is horror-stricken with fear over this new found killer who keeps picking people off one-by-one.  In light of everything that has happened the principle makes a decision to cancel school until further notice.  Then at Stu Macher’s house party the blood bath begins.  After the killer gets what he wants from Sidney, her virginity, he’s able to kill her.  Although, she is not going down without a fight!

            The phrase of up-close and personal becomes a lot more meaningful with the killer’s use of a knife.  This phallic symbol allows the killer to come into close proximity with their intended victim thus making it much more personal. This is an extension of the body that can represent something that the killer is trying to compensate for.  Another possible weapon could have been the telephone, which was used to initiate the killing.  In today’s society a lot of people tend to see technology as one of the many causes of violence or bullying.  A gun was another weapon that was used, although it wasn’t by the killer.  In the final scene the victim uses the weapon to shoot the killer straight in the forehead.  The killer does not use a gun because you don’t have to get close to the person to kill them; they yearn for that close personal contact that they never received as a child.

           

             In this film it does not become apparent to the viewer that Billy, Sidney’s boyfriend, has psychopathic tendencies until you find out that he faked his own death only to gain Sidney’s trust.  A majority of killers have a tragic or impressionable backstory to their childhood, which leads to their monstrous adulthood.  In Billy’s case his father was sleeping with Sidney’s mother, which caused Billy’s mother to leave thus abandoning him.  The psychosexual killer in him is yearning for the love of his mother within other women, which in turn fed his hunger for revenge on the Prescott family.  Billy made Sidney’s mother pay the ultimate price for separating their family; he brutally murdered and raped her.  This is an example of how females are still more harshly persecuted when an affair has occurred.  Billy did not kill and rape his father, who had as much participation in the affair as Sidney’s mother did, and he did not persecute him with the same costly price.  Throughout history it has been more socially acceptable for a man to have multiple partners rather than a woman. 

            The terrible place within a horror film always seems to be decrepitude, abandoned, or womb-like building where a majority of the killings occur.  Scream shows a different side to the terrible place by making it look like a normal house.  It is not decrepitude at all; it’s actually able to hold enough people for a house party.  The makers of this film made a very conscience decision with making the house like any other house on the block.  This idea that a killing can take place within a “normal” house could show how a killer can look like a sane human being but is actually a psychopathic killer on the inside. 

            Compared to other horror films the female characters’ death is focused on more than the male characters’ death.  Society is fascinated with the thought of someone killing a woman that is why the camera always focuses on the females’ death rather than the males’.  With this film the first person to die was Casey’s boyfriend; his death took about one minute to occur.  When Casey’s boyfriend was killed he was tied to a chair and then sliced across his abdomen.  When the killer turned to Casey the span of her death scene took about thirteen minutes.  Casey was taunted, stabbed, strangled, gutted, and then strung up in a tree. The manner in which the women are killed compared to the men involves a lot more time and effort.  This just reinforces the idea that it is still captivating to the average person to watch a woman die rather than a man.

            The film Scream in some aspects does have similarities to other horror films, but then it sets itself apart in other innovative ways as well.  The use of weapons, killer backstory, and female victims are all comparable to the typical horror formula.  While the creators use of a non-typical terrible place creates this image of an entirely different type killer who doesn’t need a dark scary place to create the same fear.  The use of a character that narrates everything that typically happens within a horror movie allows for a different perspective for the viewer as well.  This type of horror film invites a mix of typical and atypical actions/scenes in a way like no other film.