Craven a Fourth

It should be noted that it took me way too long to come up with that title. Far, far too long.

Back around January of this year, I got my first glimpse of the newest "Scream" movie. Being a huge fan of the first two, and a slight one of the third, I was really anticipating it. Saying this that way is an understatement. I have somewhat of an obsessive personality when it comes to movies. Anyone who knows me knows this. But when it comes to the "Scream" franchise, it's a little more than an obsession.

Let me explain:

When the first "Scream" came out, it was being advertised as your basic, run-of-the-mill horror movie. Some creepy sounding guy calling people, asking them about movies and stuff like that. I was 13. I didn't really know many horror movies. I know my parents didn't like me watching them unless they were PG. I know that when I went to Red's Video (a local video store that used to be located two blocks from my home), I'd hang out in the section, looking at boxes and seeing things I didn't understand. What I remember is thinking they were intriguing. That's probably not the word that came to mind when I was 13, but I'm sure it was something along those lines.

In 1996, my brother and I had a weekly date of sorts. He and I would go to the movies and see whatever just came out. "Scream" was one of these movies. Seeing it, even though it was with my brother, seemed like I was doing something wrong. A sense of danger. I was seeing an R-rated horror movie which was likely to have nudity in it. It was pretty exciting.

We saw it in the Oswego Theater. Those days, we didn't venture much past the city limits. It was the upstairs theater that is now one of the 3-D theaters. We went up there, the lights dimmed and the movie started. What happened over those next two hours was a revelation.

While I didn't quite understand a lot about the movie, I knew I liked it. I remember my brother saying to me that he thought the sheriff was the killer because of his black boots. And while I didn't exactly know what was going on (admittedly), I saw it four other times. It was the movie that I told all my friends in middle school about. As a matter of fact, I went with a couple of them. This was well before all the parents got crazy and started cracking down on teenagers seeing R movies.

With my love of the first, once the second one came out, I was there. There was no way around it. In the mean time between the first and the second, I had gotten my sister and father to watch it. They both really liked it. This was especially rare because my father wasn't one for horror movies. He was one of those weird people that like a story when they watch a movie, the type of moviegoer that is so rare nowadays.

Anyway, they liked it. When the second one came out, I made a plan to go to the midnight showing. Sure I had to go to school the next morning, but this preceded school. It was something more than school, more important than it. I understand that school is a necessary evil in some regards and do not consider it without it's merits, but I felt then (and kinda do now) that my time was better spent in that movie theater. I've had better and longer lasting memories in movie theaters than in most other places.

So, it was planned out that my friend Ben, my sister, my brother and myself would go to the midnight showing. My brother drove and we got there around 11:30. There was a line outside. It was the middle of December and people were lined up to see it at midnight. This was starting to feel more special as the night wore on. In my experience (which was limited at that point), only the good movies had lines. The two previous ones I could think of were "Ransom" and "Independence Day".

We get into the theater and sit several rows from the front. We sit through the previews (one of which I remember specifically being "The Postman" with Kevin Costner, which incidentally was laughed at during the preview itself) and the movie starts. During the movie, the same kind of stuff was going on from the first: people were guessing who it was the entire time. My friend Ben thought it was Gale, my sister wasn't sure and my brother thought it was Dewey. My entire world exploded in front of me when Randy got killed because that was the character I most identified with. I remember after he dies, there's a scene where Neve Campbell says, "It shouldn't have been Randy, it should have been me." And I remember, through tears, saying, "She's right, it should have been." Then later in the movie when the killer is revealed, she mentions to Sidney that Randy spoke poorly of someone and she got a "little knife-happy". I remember really wanting the killer dead at that point.

I was a weird kid. Sue me.

Ultimately, I ended up seeing this one four times in the theater. Once it came out on video, I was part of the Columbia House VHS thing. For those of you that don't know, or don't remember, when a movie was released at that time, they'd release it on VHS to rent. People would rent it and months down the line the VHS would be released for purchase. Well, Columbia House kinda helped with that. They offered the movies a few months before general release for a little extra on the price. You can bet your ass that "Scream 2" was going to get bought as soon as it was available.

I remember getting it in the mail and being extremely excited. I wanted to watch the first and second back to back. I wanted to bring people over to my house to watch them both with me. These movies had changed how I watched movies. I was no longer restrained to only watching what my father watched, I was developing my own taste. For better or worse, I was forming my own opinion.

My first year in high school (the same year that "Scream 2" came out, 1997) was hard. I didn't have a lot of friends and wasn't doing nearly as well in school as I wanted to. I was nervous as Hell when it came to my finals. I didn't know what I was going to do. It was such a daunting idea to take finals, I just couldn't handle it.

I remember studying for my science test and throwing "Scream 2" in and watching it. I watched the movie through in it's entirety, studying all the time. The next day, when taking my test, I was trying to remember answers for the test. I thought back to the part of the movie I was watching at the time and remembered what I was studying. I give full credit to "Scream 2" for helping me pass 9th grade.

So, with all this information, it was (or at least should be by now) obvious how much I was going to anticipate the third. Around this time (1999-2000) I was a little more savvy on the internet, had seen more horror movies and was now in my junior year of high school. The third "Scream" got me a little worried because it didn't have the writer from the original two writing it. They replaced him with Ehren Kruger, a guy that wrote on the high end "Arlington Road" and on the low end "Reindeer Games". I was a bit hesitant, but wanted to give it a fair push.

It came out in February of 2000. Again, I went to the midnight showing. Again, there was a line. But watching the movie, there didn't seem to be that much joy attached to it. I know, it's weird to say that any horror movie should have any joy attached to it, but there has to be an element of fun, excitement. While there was some, it just seemed like it was going through the motions somewhat. I didn't get nearly as excited about this one. It seemed like this one got away from the filmmakers. It had an extremely satisfying conclusion to the trilogy that probably pleased most of the fans, but everything (or at least most everything) before it seemed pat. It's hard to describe exactly, but something was definitely off.

So, a trilogy that went from excellent, to really good, to mildly disappointing was finally over. I would watch the third "Scream" quite a bit, but would re-watch the first two more often. In the decade that followed, there was talks of a fourth, but even I was a little wary being that the third was disappointing as it was.

Around 2009, the rumors of a fourth script were coming to light. This time it being written by Kevin Williamson, writer of the first two. Now I was starting to get really excited again. Stupid excited. I was telling people at work about it, most of whom did not care. By the next year, there was talk of the shoot for the fourth coming out. Then there was the rumor that this wasn't just a fourth, but the beginning of another trilogy. And that the original (remaining) cast, the original writer and Wes Craven were all attached for all three. Now I was really damn excited.

In the decade that came between the third and the fourth a lot of new types of horror movies had come out, most notoriously what they called "torture porn". I'm not exactly sure what made this so popular, but it got a little stupid after a while. While I was a fan of both "Hostel" movies, it's not like I was jumping into the air with a picket and telling people they had to see them, I understood they weren't for all tastes.

As for the "Saw" movies, I didn't really understand the allure of them to begin with. The first one was an okay but overshot "Seven" rip off with the usually reliable Cary Elwes overacting all over the place and not knowing what accent to use. The second one didn't impress me, but the third was decent from a story point. I thought it was over. As many of you probably know, there were four other sequels after that, the seventh of which was told to be the "final chapter". As I'm sure most of you know, there was a final chapter in the Friday the 13ths, a Last Crusade for the Indiana Jones movies and four movies with the words Final Destination in them. Final doesn't mean shit in the horror genre. I'm sure there will be more. Unfortunately...

With all these bullshit movies coming out and Williamson's talent to skewer pop culture tropes, I couldn't wait for the new one. It even was coming out on April 15th, tax day. I told my mother one night that I wanted to write into Wes Craven and Dimension Films and tell them that I had a good tagline for them:

On April 15th, there are only two constants in life. Taxes...and DEATH!!!

I thought it was funny. Whatever. You should be laughing right now. If not, you're not my friend.

So, once I knew the actual date of the movie coming out, I took it off from work, along with the corresponding weekend. I was expecting to see this movie at least three times opening weekend. As the day quickly approached, I tried watching the first three again, seeing if I had missed anything in any of the previous viewings. I didn't get the chance I wanted to to watch them, mainly because my sister fell asleep right around the end of the first when we were supposed to watch all three in a row.

I told (not asked, mind you) my brother that we were going to the midnight showing. Because there was not a midnight showing at the Oswego Theater, we had to go to Carousel to see it. We left fairly early Thursday night in order to get some dinner beforehand. Over dinner, we discussed many things. Stuff about the "Scream" movies, stuff about my own movie. We ate sushi, talked to the waiters and the staff at the bar and got a drink. It felt like 15 years ago when we saw the first one. It was both strange and comforting at the same time. My brother and I had bonded again when we were normally at each other's throats.

Throughout the night, my brother kept mentioning how he was too old and he didn't know why he was staying out so late to see another "Scream" movie. While I bitch a lot more than my brother, he's a lot more cynical believe it or not. We left Koto and went to the mall, parked and walked in. I was a good five or six paces ahead of my brother, mostly because of my excitement to see the movie.

We got inside and sat, a seat between us as was standard when we went to the movies. The previews started, but I didn't give a shit about them. The movie just had to start. As it did, I got a smile on my face. This smile lasted the entire movie.

Anyone that was a fan of the first three should have been a fan of the fourth. Even the third one, with it's problems and weird plots and absent main characters was good for what it was. The fourth surpassed the third with flying colors. It had what a lot of horror movies had been lacking at that point: fun. People got killed, blood was shed, but all in all, it was funny and extremely entertaining.

The reason, I think, the movie didn't do as well at the box office as many hoped it would have was because the audience and fan base from the first three is now older. The filmmakers probably hoped that they would gain more fans from this fourth one and make as much money as the first three. Instead, it made less.

My theory for this is because audiences are generally stupid nowadays. No one really wants to see a well-made movie. They'd rather just see another 3-D piece of shit with a lot of colors and Johnny Depp being goofy. The funny thing is "Scream 4" made fun of this mentality, the whole rebooting craze. Let's take a good series and then make another and instead of calling it a remake or a sequel, we call it a reboot. Worked with the Bond series and the Batman series, let's just try it with every fucking series around. It's gotten really annoying.

Let me tell you, there's no fucking way that any of these reboots are going to be better than the actual original. "Batman Begins", while being really really good, will never be as good as the Keaton/Nicholson "Batman". The original "Batman" had originality on it's side. It was the first. Just like the first "Star Wars", "Dr. No", "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and so on. I think the reason get such a hard on for these reboots is because the movie that immediately preceded them sucked. One of my good friends is a big fan of the Christopher Nolan "Batman" movies. I am too, but I realize that they have flaws just like any other movie. Just like the Nicholson one. In order to fully appreciate these new movies, you have to realize they came from somewhere. This is what "Scream 4" understands.

While trying to be a reboot, it's also a sequel. It makes the comment, pretty clearly too, that reboots are just pale shadows of the original. As a matter of fact, one of the characters in "Scream 4" says, "You forgot the first rule to sequels. Don't fuck with the original." And it's true. James Bond wasn't blonde, The Joker was older than Batman and a smart chemist, not a crazy, "agent of chaos". And the remake of "True Grit", while having it's merits (namely Matt Damon), was just the original movie in a different package. The Coen Brothers tried saying that they didn't watch the original during production. Well, if they didn't, they must have some sort of freaky memory because the movies almost look identical.

The point is, reboots will never be as good as the original. What made "Scream 4" so interesting and smart is that it didn't try saying that it was. All these reboots try doing is saying that they're better than the original ones. People have no fucking memory at all. They're all just looking for the next bigger and better thing when the better thing is probably already on their DVD shelf.

Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven knew there was no way they'd be able to catch lightning in a bottle a second time in a row. What they were trying to do is shine a mirror on modern audiences and their expectations. When they did this 15 years ago, people had a better sense of humor. They had humility. In our society today, more people are indignant about bullshit. They don't like being told they're wrong, everyone has gone through some weird transition where we expect less of our entertainment (with the resurgence of reality shows) and these self-righteous terrible people.

It's no surprise that people didn't go to see this. They didn't like being told they were stupid for liking this bullshit. They shied away from it, like most people do therapy. Too proud to admit their mistakes.

Because of this, people are now just allowing movies and ideas that are generally mediocre take over the multiplexes. And while "Inception" was lauded as being one of the most groundbreaking action movies of the past 10 years, it didn't have the same impact that "The Matrix" or "Minority Report" did because it was missing something: respect. "Inception" was too busy telling you how smart it was to sit down and explain itself to you. It would have rather just seemed really heady with really good action sequences and make the smart people feel smarter for liking it. As it stands, it was a solid three star movie.

And while "Inception" and "Scream 4" have little in common other than the letters "e" and "c", it stands to reason. "Inception" developed one character and went from there. It took an hour to explain half the stuff going on in the movie and the other half, dazzling the audience with special effects. Before the audience had a chance to ask a question, they were bombarded with loud action sequences. Anyone that says the movie left loose ends open deliberately gives it way too much credit. It was lazy screenwriting.

Anyway, the point is "Scream 4" restored my faith in movies. While it may not have been the best of the bunch (although it is tied for second with the second), it showed me that filmmakers aren't always crass, uppity people. They are equally aware of the travesties that are being put on film as some audience members are. Because of the low box office numbers, I doubt we'll see a "Scream 5", which is really a shame because I was looking forward to it.

The fact remains that audiences are extremely stupid. They'd rather see "The Hangover Part II" than something that's different and wild. Something easy over something hard.

I'll end this with a small story.

Back when I was in college, during my senior year, I took a World Cinema class with Bennett Schaber. Those of you who do not know him are missing out because, not only is he a great guy, he also knows a hell of a lot about movies. More than I could probably ever gain in my lifetime. This was the second class I had taken with him. The first one I didn't exactly excel at because I was never very good at critical theory. While in that first class with him, he probably got wind that I knew more than I lead on about film as I answered a question about an obscure Bogart film in front of the classroom.

Now it came to World Cinema. At this point, SUNY Oswego didn't have a film major. All their film classes were under an English heading. I took it because I never have allowed myself to expand my horizons as far as world cinema had gone. I was hoping this would help with it.

The first day of class, Bennett was standing at the lectern. He had three separate papers; one blue, one red and one green. He explained that the blue paper was the most difficult of the syllabi, that whoever chose that paper would have the most work and it would be the most challenging. The difficulty decreased with the other two syllabi.

He would go to each of us in the class and hand us the one we asked for. I kept debating as he was handing them out, not knowing exactly which I was going to take. When he got to me, I pussed out.

"I'll take the red one."

Bennett looked at me a little strange. He started to hand me the red one and as soon as I closed my hand on it, he retracted it, giggling slightly.

"No, no. You're not getting off that easy."

He then handed me the blue one. I laughed. He nodded slightly and went to the next kid who took the green one. He did not take it back from the kid, but went quickly to the next. Bennett believed that I could do the heftier work, that I would be successful in this venture. A lot of professors wouldn't do that, demand more from their students. He did.

I just hope to one day be able to do the same for someone else when it comes to film. Demand something of my audience, challenge them. Maybe they'll come out the other end better people as I believe I have.

Note: I understand the irony of this happy-go-lucky ending to this post when I've been bitching throughout about movies tastes and stuff like that, especially since the wallpaper on my computer screen is the poster to "Cheerleader Camp".