Because I was such a supportive friend, I tried to push my childhood fears of people jumping out to the back of my mind and handed over my money to the box office attendant. It should be noted that Scream was in the smallest theater at that point (Cinema 6) and it was only half full. I had read a positive review of the flick in Rolling Stone magazine but this did not neutralize my fears, instead, it served to ignite them. "Scary and funny," I believe it read. Funny, great. Scary, not so much. I purchased a bag of licorice as for some reason, I did not wear my Dolphins or Maple Leafs hat that night. I'm really not sure why I wouldn't have worn one given that I wear a hat about 70% of the time and I must have been away from University for Christmas break. So there was no excuse really.
Anyway, we entered Cinema 6 and I was wondering how I could get out of this situation. Did I have to babysit my teenage brother or sister? Did my parents need me to pick-up something from the store? Christmas shopping, was it done? No dice, I was stuck there. So I tried to think happy thoughts. Drew Barrymore was in the movie. Julia Salinger was in the movie. Monica from Friends was in the movie. All good points, I enjoyed their work.
After some previews, the movie started with a black screen, the phone ringing and the Dimension Films logo appeared. Cue Drew Barrymore making Jiffy Pop on the stove. Already I'm sweating. I don't want to spoil things for people who haven't seen this movie (and if you haven't do yourself a favour and watch it), but let's just say my licorice bag spent a lot of time in my eye line over the next 15 minutes. This sequence was scary ... and funny. Just like Rolling Stone said it would be. There were references to old horror movies, ones I had never seen, such as Friday the 13th and the original Halloween. The intro was bold and showed that in this new horror universe, no one was safe from death.
After the opening sequence, my licorice bag could relax a bit, as the movie settled into some solid storytelling, with a nice backstory for Neve Campbell's Sydney Prescott. I am by no means a cinema-phile but I noted that this movie was pretty well-written and the characters were fleshed out, which is always positive in any movie, regardless of genre. There were some good scares, such as the Fonz in peril and Sydney being attacked at her house.
I also noted that Ghostface had the most menacing voice, which completely fit with the proceedings. He also had some pretty amazing one-liners.
The death wasn't that fast and furious until the last third of the movie (or the "final act main cast bloodbath" as referenced in Scream 4). By this point, I was fully hooked on this movie. I almost wanted to be scared. Dare to scare me. Bring it! The last third had some scares but was more gory than frightening. The motive of the killer was solid and just brought everything together, tying up Sydney's backstory.
So after this positive viewing experience, I decided maybe I should give horror a try. My then 11 or 12 year old brother was also up for this. We watched the original Halloween, and it was awesome. I watched the sequel again and it was decent. I'm sure we watched other horror films. But then Scream took off and the copy cats started coming out of the woodwork. Masterpieces such as I Know What You Did Last Summer (any movie that featured Buffy and Jennifer Love Hewitt at that time knew what it was doing) and we embraced all of these films. I finally caught up with Friday the 13th and it's many sequels, The Exorcist and it's sequels, Psycho, etc.
However, while the first 15 minutes of Scream were frightening, the scariest movie I have ever seen is The Grudge remake, also with Buffy. That was 90 minutes of pure anticipation/jumping out terror. With a scary demon kid. People in the theater were laughing at me because I was so scared. Second scariest is the first 30 minutes of Jeepers Creepers. I almost left the theater. I think it's the anticipation of knowing something terrible will happen that gets me. Once it happens, I am good but the moments before the mind starts going and going and knowing and knowing. But I think I like this feeling...to a degree. Though I still haven't watched The Conjuring or Paranormal Activity.
Back to Scream, which is actually on TV now as I'm typing this. As you may understand from the Oasis post, once I really like something, I become relentlessly obsessed. We had 2 VCRs in our house so once Scream was available on VHS (yes VHS), my brother and I taped it so we could view it multiple times, which we did. We were there on opening night for Scream 2. I ended up seeing Scream 2 three times in the theater. And for the opening of Scream 3, I sent Outlook meeting invites out. And my brother in law scored me premiere tickets to Scream 4, complete with a Neve Campbell Q&A. Of course, none of the other Scream movies measures up to the first (2 comes close, 3 is the worst and 4 is entertaining and rather gory), but like Oasis affected my musical growth, Scream was my gateway to embracing horror movies. And it was also my gateway to moving back into creative writing as my first few pieces were horror yarns.
That said, I haven't seen a good horror movie in a while (or even a non-kids movie in a while)...though Annabelle looks promising and frightening.
So I have to offer a belated thanks to Trish...and wish everyone a Happy Halloween. What's your favourite scary movie?
No comments:
Post a Comment