Demasking the Slasher Film

In retrospect, it seems obvious that "Scream" would become iconic, a classic--infinitely parodied and imitated to this day. Indeed, I re-watched it due to the blatant copycatting in the "Fear Street" trilogy (2021), particularly the first entry in the series. Perhaps only "Psycho" (1960) and "Halloween" (1978) among Hollywood slashers have been as consequential. I suspect this is because the genre deconstruction fits so well the appeal of the slasher subgenre of horror, especially to teenage or young audiences. The deconstruction sets a low bar of accessibility to be in on the joke, readily apparent and easily digested. Some critics have suggested that "Scream" requires a high degree of knowledge of the genre, but I'd argue it offers the opposite by explaining what it is so thoroughly and without subtlety that it promised and earned a broader appeal to even those not as familiar or more casually so with such gory teen romps. Moreover, unlike some other cheeky meta constructions before it--say, the Western in "Blazing Saddles" (1974)--the genre and its own narrative is still treated with a reverence that encourages the usual dramatic tricks of character identification and enough superficial sincerity to not risk coming across as patronizing. Hard to pull off a madman in an Edvard Munch's "The Scream" mask (the so-called "Ghostface") doing pratfalls chasing shrieking girls as both ridiculously amusing on one level and tension-building on another, but just that, at least to an extent, is accomplished here.

A familiarity with "Psycho" and "Halloween" is about all that seems strongly recommended to grasp the mechanics and inversions of the genre going on here. Other titles mentioned in the numerous scenes mentioning other films tend to be largely reworkings of those two--the likes of "Halloween" meets "Psycho" in the woods of "Friday the 13th" (1980) or the "Halloween" plus disco of "Prom Night" (1980), and Wes Craven is just tooting his own horn referencing "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). "Halloween," too, was consciously a continuation of its film legacy, although more subtly reflexive about it, as it's about the cinematic gaze rather than genre deconstruction. The principle connection was made by casting Jamie Lee Curtis as the screaming heroine, as she's the daughter of Janet Leigh, of "Psycho" fame. Whereas Curtis played the goody-two-shoes virgin, explaining her ultimate triumph, she was still initially stalked and punished as if for the sins of her mother's character, and Michael Myers continuing the legacy of Norman Bates peeping thereof as an extension of his incestuous psychopathy.

This is the importance of the backstory in "Scream," of the one-year anniversary of the rape and murder of the mother of Neve Campbell's character. This mother, too, was sexually promiscuous, a cheater, or at least that's the rumor. Campbell's Sidney also begins as the virgin type, as she rebukes her boyfriend's advances, in the mold of Curtis's Laurie. Craven tries to subvert the moralism of this trope, though, by making Sidney more of her own person, including punching the tabloid TV reporter and, ultimately, sex. Nevertheless, the plot is largely an elaboration of "Halloween." Knife-wielding masked madman an' all, except now he also carries a mobile phone--back when that was still a novel invention.

Besides Sidney and if not for the whodunit aspect of the plot, the only other two figures of interest here are the reporter played by Courtney Cox and the video-store clerk as by Jamie Kennedy. Both do a lot of the work in propping up the postmodern edifice: her a writer of a book within the film that tells the film's backstory and a reporter who tells the present unfolding narrative for the camera, and him the curator of horror cinema that helps guide the characters within the film and the audience without it to how these movies work.

Yet, special mention should also be made to Drew Barrymore's role, which is a neat misdirect in the tradition of Leigh as initially playing the apparent protagonist in "Psycho," as well as establishing the game of self-aware slasher-flick trivia being played here. It's a great two-fold opening scene in this respect. There's the self-reference on the surface made obvious because they're talking about it on the phone, and there's the implied sort that rewards reflection on it by comparison with Leigh's part in "Psycho" and Barrymore being a big-enough, known star to pull it off--indeed, an actress with an even more extensive actorly heritage than Curtis.

The same two-fold reflexivity continues in the end. There's the obviousness of "Halloween" playing on the TV as a similar scenario is enacted outside that frame and within another one that is the film. The film-within-the-film device that's so blatant it's as though it's hitting us over the head with the TV. Amusingly, it literally does just that to a character (talk about a pun of breaking the fourth wall). But, those familiar with that prior slasher film might recall that it, too, featured films-within-the-film on the TV that reflected the themes of the outer story. A clever layering here, then, of reflexivity, which itself is already layered by the multiple films and their acknowledgement. Too bad its copycats tend to miss that.