Wes Craven directs Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy, Roger L Jackson, Liev Schreiber, Timothy Olyphant, Rory Culkin and Emma Roberts in this meta-comedy horror series where various disguised murderers stalk victims following the tropes and pattern of slasher classics.

Scream came just at the right time in my life. Horror was in the doldrums. Sequels to the canon were weak affairs often going direct to video… and these were my first underwhelming experiences of Michael Myers, Jason, Leatherface et al. The movies getting wide cinema releases when I hit the right age for scares were fantastic but quite cerebral… I love Candyman, Fire Walk With Me, New Nightmare and In The Mouth of Madness but you can’t really approach any of them as popcorn joyrides. Then Scream came along and it was hip, funny, smart, silly, gory and relentless. A real multiplex hurricane. It worked as a comedy. It worked as a murder mystery. It worked as a teen movie (that soundtrack!). And as a horror it was a celebration… tense, bloody and an absolute rampage of tricks, near misses and rug pulls. Impeccably directed by a master of horror who knew how to make an attractive looking package.

Dawson’s Creek creator Kevin Williamson’s knowing script wasn’t trying to say anything or show off, just deliver a fantastic night at the movies. Packed houses gasped and guffawed at in in communal glee. Matinee or midnight showing or VHS sleepover, Scream was a generation defining experience. The revolutionary Drew Barrymore opening stalk sets the stall out. This film was going throw you off balance, bite your nails, build, build, build and… deliver. Strap yourself into the rollercoaster, there’s plenty more deaths to come and nobody is safe. Not even your snacks. The first Scream is full of expertly orchestrated set pieces. The video delay creep up and the garage door escape are equally playful but captivating.

I sat in the multiplex with my mates, my brain tying itself into knots over who the killer was. This is the franchises’ key pleasure. It is a giallo whodunnit filmed like an episode of 90210. I figured out there had to be two killers at least by the start of the iconic lengthy party bloodbath but was still satisfied when they revealed the murderous pair of Billy and Stu. They weren’t so Scooby Doo left of field so as to strain credulity and it felt pretty revolutionary to make your prime suspects turn out to be the killers… and due to excellent misdirection that still feel like an actual shock divulgence.

A quick word on Matthew Lillard – he’s consistently performing at 11 here and absolutely cooks. It is a badgering, unrestrained bit of overacting and the film is all the better for it. The first film’s only real misstep is killing him off as Lillard could have made a fine teen jock Hannibal Lector-style figure to recur throughout the rest of the entries. Not the killer coming back, but an unsettling, influential presence revisited in his cell. “LIVER ALONE!”

Craven’s continual involvement aside, I’d say the initial casting is what kept the franchise consistently strong. Very few actors introduced after the first chapter make a lasting impression or return outwith their own story. Any series that survives the early killing of the perfectly recruited Barrymore, Lillard and Rose McGowan must be doing something right. McGowan again is really far too good here and fetchingly pulls off perhaps the tightest outfits outside of superhero cinema when she isn’t destroying her lines. Obviously in horror movies recognisable faces can die and should die but Scream happily hacks up America’s Sweethearts (the kid from E.T., Buffy, Oscar Winning Anna Paquin) while being rather precious about its returning players.

It was a indisputable boon for the follow ups that the winning core of Campbell, Cox, Kennedy and Arquette are left standing at close of play. Nearly all filming on their limited downtime from hit TV shows, their chemistry and commitment to the series has been a credit to them. Even if some are only kept alive by video messages from the grave or test audience reshoot resurrection.

I’m pretty sure Arquette’s Dewey is killed off in the first two entries only to be revived by quite blatant late in the day rejigs. And why would you want to lose him? The role of the boyish law enforcer fits him like a glove and his heart of gold never fails to bring an unforced warmness to his Screamtime. He is the saga’s secret weapon and if none of the originals but him returned for the belated fifth film I’d be content.

Cox and he have a lovely magic together. In Scream 2, their reunion makes you swoon. I’ve never seen a horror series do this before or after. Execute a burgeoning, tumultuous, mismatched romantic relationship like Nora Ephron or Frank Capra did a ghost write. Sure Marco Beltrami just steals a musical sting from Broken Arrow to underline their pregnant moments together in 2 but that stolen Hans Zimmer stanza works beautifully.

Cox’s ruthless reporter Gail Weathers goes through a fascinating arc. Clearly Cox (the biggest star in 1995) took on the black hearted tabloid journo role as the antithesis of her Monica in Friends role but by the fourth entry she has essentially become Monica anyway. Overbearing, competitive and married to a funny beta. Gail weathers the worst hairstyling choices of the movies too. It is almost a relief in 4 she doesn’t have severe cancer bangs or riot grrl streaks!

The thinking lad’s teen crush, Neve Campbell is a stronger than regular final girl but they do struggle to know what to keep doing with Sidney, especially in 3 where she clearly was only available for a supporting role so Gail & Dewey take full spotlight. Sidney Prescott is a bit too vanilla and sweet to go full Sarah Connor or Laurie Strode (though it is threatened a few times). She’s a pretty and dainty bellweather but if I was marshalling the property I might have let her shock demise define the end of 2 or the prologue of 3 or 4. Maybe Sidney is only as good as her eventual antagonists and that’s why she feels more like the straight girl to all the other overachievers in the first two sequels. But every franchise could do with such an unfussy lynchpin, better to be an integral Danny Glover rather than gorgeous but unemployed.

The first sequel successfully reanimates who and what worked efficiently. It might not always hit the original’s ridiculously high gold standard but I’d struggle to name a rushed into production Part 2 of a horror franchise that is this compatible. Not that it is perfect. The movie preview prologue with Jada Pinkett-Smith feels unconnected and a little overly mean spirited toward our less stellar Drew replacement. The new cast members could very well be the understudies and second choices who didn’t make the cut in 1995. Why would you cast a young menacing wild eyed Timothy Olyphant in his first featured role and not expect us to instantly peg the eye catching loon as the killer? There were many desperate mid-shoot rewrites after the original killers identities were leaked on the internet. With this and introducing all the fresh victims / suspects taking up so much of the runtime it takes a long while to pick up pace… but then we get fifty minutes of expert slasher sequences – the sound booth and car crash escapes are both on a par with anything in the original. The slow dread of Sidney having to climb over an unconscious Ghostface is sweat inducing. Scream 2 ends up a great night at the movies – warts and all.

Horror where the teen ensemble watch horror movies, obsesses about serial killers, have cell phones, internet and Blockbuster memberships were in! I Know What You Did Last Summer, Halloween H20, Urban Legend, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty, Valentine, Urban Legends: Final Cut and Teaching Mrs Tingle were born. A whole new cycle. None were as good as the first two Screams. Many weren’t even as good as last 6 Stab movies.

3, the final spin of the sub-genre, is harder to defend and love. The self aware, movie obsessed killer aspects are ramped up to near parody. Jay and Silent Bob turn up… what is this… Scary Movie? Does anyone care about “the rules of a trilogy finale”? Are they even true? If they are, are they even followed? And we all knew this was never going to be THE END anyway… only Back To The Future has the balls to destroy the Delorean and full stop the series. See Alien: Resurrection!

The Hollywood studio setting creates some uncomfortably close to home scenes for a Weinstein Brothers produced product. Seriously, is Wes Craven shining Harvey on, daring his disreputable paymaster to cut a scene where a top executive admits to rapes and exploiting young hopefuls?! Campbell takes a backseat for much of the mystery yet wants a full emotional arc. The actual killer when revealed is unmemorable. Dewey doesn’t even get killed but then wheeled into an ambulance at the last moment before the credits?! Don’t they know what we want?!!

Only Parker Posey, as the spoilt flake actress cast as Stab 3’s Gail Weathers, adds anything new and uncompromised while the returning players dash around half hearted rehashes of their glory days. The Cotton Weary opener is intense, Sidney revisits a fake Woodsboro, has creepy dead mum nightmares… It just about gets away with it all, familiarity breeds content, but you are glad they then took a time out and got Kevin Williamson back before greenlighting a fourth chapter.

What 4 lacks in originality (it is a self conscious soft reboot / legacyquel so let’s not be too hard on it) it makes up for in its final half an hour. For 70 minutes we are gifted a pretty solid retread of the first film with the veterans giving up half their screentime to an attractive bunch of new personalities. Alison Brie, Rory Culkin and Marley Shelton make a nice impressions as evolutions of the original cast. You care as Ghostface harasses and eviscerates them in a way that not even Sarah Michelle Gellar’s two scene C.C. could generate back in 1996. And the deaths and cold calls feel pointedly more severe, nastier and extreme than a decade ago too.

Yet the big party bloodbath turns out to be red herring finale, too many of the principals are still standing. Our newly minted final girl / Sidney 2.0 is played by emerging comedy horror star Emma Roberts. This is her breakout role and she isn’t content just surviving another Ghostface massacre. She has bit more agency and ambition than that… The epilogue goes off the rails and Scream 4 suddenly has the anarchic, unpredictable blood soaked wit that made a little hyped release in 1996 such a game changer! It is well worth a revisit.

10 / 8 / 6 / 7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Ben Wheatley directs Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristin Scott Thomas in this remake of the Hitchcock / Du Maurier gothic romance where a young bride is haunted by the overwhelming reputation of her wealthy husband’s dead first wife.

Big fan of the Joan Fontaine version and have just finished the book in prep for this release. It definitely is a change of pace for Kill List’s Wheatley. A massive step up in budget which he deploys masterfully. This is a sumptuous looking film with few corners cut. In fact, in terms of classic wealth porn and creepy addendums, he and his team adds additional corners just for ornate overkill. Visually there is no restraint. I was seduced by this film’s commitment to dazzling period costume and ominous decoration. Suitably James and Hammer are both extremely fuckable wall hanging to display all these perfectly tailored fabrics and rich trappings off of. They actually don’t struggle with the psychological depth of the text too much but both are possibly a little too naturally virile and charismatic to truly convince of their characters’ inherent paranoia, inadequacy and guilt.

It is actually the own goal of Mrs Danvers that doesn’t light up the screen. On paper, Scott Thomas should be masterful casting but she only make a suitable fist of the inscrutable antagonist. She is performing in the long but still woundingly recent shadow of Lesley Manville’s Phantom Thread powerhouse, a true Danvers in all but name. And pales by unfortunate comparison.

The movie sputters somewhat in the second half because of this, feels like a redundant exercise in tracing. But I was very much caught up in the initial seduction. Wheatley immerses us in a world that both us and his protagonist feel like interlopers in. The fractal editing, where scenes interlace into each other with elliptical frames, add to the heady immersive fantasy as we become Manderley’s new lady of the house.

Spoilers – This version is best approached as if we are sharing a lonely poor girl’s Monte Carlo wet dream. Following the late night maze of her dirty fancy. She wants to marry a rich young widower but realises she might be inferior to the gorgeous society wife he has lost… so she conjures a masturbatory mystery in her cramped single bed where the dead wife is a formidable but eventually beatable bitch champion, where she can completely own her upper class stud and where she can outgrow her timid virginal inferiority to prove herself the better of both imagined parties. The dead Rebecca is superhuman in her desirability but such a rotten egg (just look at that eventual diagnosis of her womb) that their shared husband had to murder her. How’s that for putting yourself up on a pedestal? The narrative our plain Jane humps her pillow to eventually crowns her more bloody loveable than the most gorgeous, manipulative whore that ever lived! She even casts the villain as her own likely future… her reality is she is the paid help. She’s far less likely to become the blushing bride to a fortune of indentured posh boy dickings as she is to ending up a lady’s companion turned bitter, controlling house servant. More spoilers – but the dream ends with her already dead rival disgraced, her own fate immolated and her prize trapped in an eternal summer holiday of hotel fucking and terrace breakfasts.

This interpretation understand the text really well but the thrills and revelations feel glutenous and heatless as a cold cut buffet once we get to Manderley. You’d think Wheatley could master the unravelling of the murderous guilty dream somewhat better but he has used all his strengths on the initial romance. He’s exhausted after getting us primed for that whirlwind first fuck. The scandalous revelations that follow pour flat and lack bite. It all unspools rather perfunctorily once we are shown our new unerotic bedroom. Still everyone looks far too over-qualified for this not to be well worth a watch.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Mark Williams directs Liam Neeson, Kate Walsh and Jai Courtney in this crime thriller where a hulking safe cracker turns himself into the FBI for a reduced sentence, only for dodgy agents to steal his multi-million swag haul and frame him for murder.

There was a point in the Nineties (around Beverly Hills Cop III) where infamously Eddie Murphy decided that his fanbase didn’t want to see him always joking and being smart. So they cut a lot of the humour and cheek out of the sequel on the star’s whim. He was wrong. Liam Neeson has made a similar mistake here. He feels his following doesn’t want to see him scrapping, running and diving about anymore. He’s too old for it to be convincing and anyhoo… he’s a proper actor who can attach emotional heft to one of these vehicles in place of a good solid beat down sequence. So what we get is a competent but thrifty take on The Fugitive… only where the gunplay and car chases last fleetingly. Just long enough to fill a teaser with some variety of peril. You still get Neeson threatening people down the phone and ludicrous plotting. And somewhat surprisingly this unambitious often still unbelievable movie almost gets away with its extreme rationing of the good stuff. Almost…

4

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder and Ron Perlman in this fourth entry in the Alien saga where a clone of the long deceased Ripley contains xenomorph DNA and a desire to survive.

Me and my sister went to see this on the big screen. My first Alien film at the cinema. As a teenager it delivers everything you think you want from an Alien film: space marines, space pirates, slapstick gore, swimming xenomorphs, ❤️Winona❤️! But it doesn’t really work. The only disc on the quadrilogy I tend to avoid. It wasn’t quite as awful as I last remembered on this cautious revisit but it is a definite downgrade. The comic book stylings of the first act – we are essentially watching a scratch draft of Joss Whedon’s Firefly – get lost in the scraping, dirty mix. Even Ryder and Perlman struggle to hold focus as the chaos unspools. Some of the production design is excellent (the space lab malfunctions nicely, the pirates have their secret weapons), there’s a lot of quirky visual stuff going on… but you really notice that most of the later scenes take place in the same two corridors. The new mutated Ripley frees Weaver up to have some malicious larks but you lose any engagement with her once she starts fucking the globulous Queen. Who is she after that? What are her motivations? Feelings? Does she feel used? Fulfilled? Human? Such a ‘throw it up on screen and hope the worst shit is forgotten’ attitude doesn’t fit with the three tightly calibrated perfect predecessors. 3 was and is misunderstood. No such defence here. 4 is still a big, loud, steaming hot mess of a movie. One that it is better to detach your brain from and just let it frazzle your retinas for 109 minutes. A serious stumble for the series that it never really has recovered from yet still more uncanny and inventive than most franchises’ fourth entries.

6

Walter Hill directs Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte and Brion James in this belated sequel where Reggie Hammond is finally released only to discover everyone wants him dead.

A tired beat for beat retread. The action sequences are certainly bigger but less nail biting. The jokes are tired and repetitive. Every other scene Murphy recaps us on the bad day he’s having… a patter that wasn’t that all that funny the first time. Nolte looks bored as fuck. Done for the paychecks but destructive enough to fill an evening. At least James Horner’s sinuous score is still in place.

4

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Sam Raimi directs Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe in this blockbuster introduction to the Peter Parker superhero mythology.

Summer 2002. This was it. The big one. And its still pretty pretty good. Pretty bitty. That’s the issue. It is collage of iconic comic book moments funnelled into some kinda pipe of a story. We get radioactive bites, unrequited romance, discovery of powers, high school tables being turned, the birth of the Green Goblin, costumes being designed, a wrestling match, the death of Uncle Ben… An hour in and we still really haven’t had a consistent Spider-Man action sequence. More montages, more soap, Peter and MJ are adults in the job market! Still not a lot of sustained excitement. Well… Raimi deploys his Evil Dead / Darkman extreme framing, brash colour scheme and energetic editing to tie it all together. You really feel like you are racing through an omnibus of Spider-Man’s golden years on holiday.

It probably didn’t help that they filmed that teaser trailer World Trade Centre action sequence and then couldn’t put it in the film. Are you seriously telling me something as big budget and epic as that wasn’t originally intended for the middle act of the actual movie? Because the middle of the movie is severely lacking such a sequence.

The bad stuff feels muted now. A charming product of its time. The Green Goblin’s stiff toyified armour is still as stinky as you remember. Dafoe’s performance is pretty randomly generated… but his character is having a year long psychotic break?! The great stuff still shines through… Dunst is luminescent in her first adult role, the swinging around Manhattan sequences have a real adrenaline rush to them, J.K. Simmons utterly owns laughter generator J. Jonah Jameson. So Spider-Man V1.1 is all over the shop as a narrative… all the heavy lifting is out of the way for the sequels and you could never accuse one second of it as being dull.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

James Bobin directs Isabela Moner, Eugenio Derbez and Michael Peña in this kids comedy adventure where the animated explorer goes live action, experiences high school and has to rescue her parents from treasure hunters.

A bright and sunny Latino The Goonies. Bobin brings the same self aware screwball meta silliness to this franchise as he reinvigorated in The Muppets. All the performances are spirited and not too gratingly nice.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Jim Sharman directs Jessica Harper, Cliff De Young and Richard O’Brien in this sequel to Rocky Horror (Yes, it is!) where Brad and Janet’s marriage is threatened by a never-ending TV channel.

A valiant but unsuccessful attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle twice. Rocky Horror shouldn’t really work but deliciously does. This only intermittently comes close to the chaotic magic. The four main issues are easy to identify; no Tim Curry, no Susan Sarandon, no classic showstopper tunes, no room to breathe. It almost feels gaspingly engineered not to give the cult-ish fanbase of its progenitor a chance to heckle the screen. Not that they cared for it anyway in the end. A couple of the songs are toe tappers but you won’t be ‘jumping to the left’ to them. Harper is cute as the Janet replacement but Cliff De Young makes little impression as new Brad. Curry wisely bailed when he realised he might have to play dual roles or sing in an accent… O’Brien, Barry Humphries and young Rik Mayall do bring it, keep the energy going. The deranged physicality is there, just none of the soul. Whereas Rocky Horror was transgressively inclusive, this feel cynical and abrasive. The labyrinthine set design is impressive but visually Shock Treatment has to be the reddest movie ever made. Like staring into a warning light for two hours. It lasts 94 minutes.

5

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Allan Dwan directs John Wayne, John Agar and Adele Mara in this WWII movie where a tough C.O. leads his troops to victory over the Japanese.

There’s no denying there’s a strange sensation watching a man who dodged the war order and berate real soldiers re-enacting their violent moment in history. That’s right, Duke… you show that actual veteran how to thrust a bayonet! Beyond that overriding, slightly queasy irony this is pretty standard stuff. A scene between Wayne and a prostitute has a wonderful charm to it. No reality to it again but sticks in the memory all the same.

5

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Aki Kaurismäki directs André Wilms, Blondin Miguel and Jean-Pierre Darroussin in this French comedy where an ageing shoeshiner takes in an African boy on the run from port town’s immigration authorities.

What a double bill! From watching the miserable grind of right wing bureaucracy in I, Daniel Blake to this far more cinematic and romantic yet equally powerful affair. Kaurismäki’s approach to emotive injustices is the polar opposite to Loach. Colourful, deadpan, cine-literate, playful, entertaining. The characters might be jokey blanks but they are bastions of the human spirit. Inherently good, just a little shopworn by life. Kaurismäki present people as they’d like to be – good natured, unfussily heroic and rebellious. After a didactic dose of realism from Loach, I was quite happy to embrace this weaponised fantasy. It left me with a massive smile on my face, considering it is populated exclusively by grumps and losers, that’s quite the achievement.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/