Scream

So late Sunday night, and into Monday morning at about 1:30 in the am, I was about to go to bed, but needed something to fall asleep to. I turned on the tv, and rediscovered a nice little movie that was just starting on one of the movie channels: Scream.

I ended up staying up until 3:30 watching the entire film. It would've been nice to have just TiVo'd it, but I TiVo'd a whole mess of Buster Keaton films from last week, and hadn't watched all of them yet, so I stayed up... Besides, I haven't watched a horror movie during the middle of the night since I watched the first two Evil Dead films on consecutive nights a couple years back. Anyway, this time I watched Scream with a new pair of eyes. I mean I feel that I now can appreciate films on a whole nother level post-film school. [Insert warm and fuzzy feeling]

Scream is smart and satirical of the horror genre. And in so doing, it plays right in line with the rules of horror films. But it also sees fit to break some of them: The killer(s) are motivated by the disintegration of the family, and a need to -in some way- rectify it all. And adversely: despite not being a virgin anymore, the heroine lives through the ordeal.... *sigh* Phew, here I was thinking that three months after graduating, it would've all went out the other ear by now...

Kevin Williamson's structure is awesome, the execution by Wes Craven is great, and this is why I love horror movies. It has the ability to tell a good story with the ability to scare the shit outta you, and also doesn't take itself too seriously. But more than anything: it's quite intelligible. Scream is part of the genre that is the teen-slasher movie, but beyond that, its intelligence is what makes it just as good now as it was when it was originally released. My money is that it will still hold up well in the years to come.