Monday, June 1, 2009

Scream

Scream is a 1996 horror film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. The film revitalized the slasher film genre in the mid 1990s, similar to the impact Halloween (1978) had on late 1970s film, by using a standard concept with a tongue-in-cheek approach that combined straightforward scares with dialogue that satirized slasher film conventions. The film stars Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy and Drew Barrymore. This movie received an R rating.

The film begins with Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) answering the phone, the man who has called says he has the wrong number. He calls again, and from there the scene turns into the ultimate trivia contest. If Casey answers the horror based trivia questions right, she and her boyfriend, Steve (Kevin Patrick Walls) get to live. The caller reveals Casey's boyfriend is tied up outside on the patio. She gets a trick question though, "Who is the killer in Friday the 13th?" The man on the other end doesn't say if it is the series or the first film. She answers Jason but in the original film, it's his mother. When she turns the patio lights back on, Steve has been disemboweled.

The caller promises Casey another round, but Casey refuses. She is caught by a cloaked figure wearing a mask and is stabbed repeatedly. At the same time her parents arrive and find the house trashed. Panicked, her parents leave the house only to see Casey's gutted body hung from a tree.

The movie then cuts to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), who is attempting to cope with the anniversary of her mother's brutal rape and murder. The following night, the killer attempts to kill her at her home. The killer is known as Ghostface, who wears a Halloween costume reminiscent of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream.

Sidney tries to sort through the trauma of being attacked and, in reaction to circumstantial evidence, points an accusatory finger at her boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). She decides to stay at the home of her friend Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) and Tatum's brother Dwight, nicknamed Dewey (David Arquette). While there, she receives a phone call from the killer. He says Billy Loomis is not the killer and she will find out who the killer is soon.

Already under considerable stress, Sidney is forced to deal with the scandalization of her own attack by ambitious tabloid television newswoman Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). Gale is responsible for a tell-all book revealing the promiscuous affair between Sidney's mother and her convicted killer, Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber). School is soon canceled as a precautionary measure, leaving the building temporarily abandoned. Despite the closing, the school principal (Henry Winkler) is killed while in school. Unaware of their principal's fate, Tatum's boyfriend Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) throws a party at his house. When Sidney and Tatum arrive at Stu's house they see Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), a horror movie fanatic. Going to collect some beers from the fridge, Tatum is brutally murdered by Ghostface.

Meanwhile, Gale sensing the potential for a major scoop, hides a video camera inside the house. She then goes outside and begins searching for anything suspicious, with the help of Dewey. The party goers soon receive word of the principal's death and head to the school, leaving few people including Sidney alone in the house.

While Sidney and Billy are upstairs the killer appears and stabs Billy. Sidney escapes out the window where she sees Tatum's dead body. Randy, unaware of what's going on and watching a horror movie, narrowly avoids death when the killer hears Sidney's screams. Inside Gale's news van, her cameraman Kenny (W. Earl Brown) lets a terrified Sidney inside. Kenny and Sidney witness the killer nearly kill Randy on the video, it has a 30 second delay. Kenny steps outside the van but his throat is slashed by the killer.

Sidney escapes the van to find Dewey stepping out of the house but falls down to reveal a knife in his back. Sidney runs to Dewey's car and tries to escape but the keys aren't there, the killer shows he has the keys and tries to kill her but fails. Sidney runs back to the house where she finds Randy and Stu, who are presented as the only remaining suspects. When they both accuse each other of being the killer, Sidney does not know who to trust and slams the door in their faces.

Billy comes falling down the stairs, alive but seriously injured. Billy asks for the gun that Sidney has found and she gives it to him and he opens the door, letting Randy into the house, Randy makes a fuss that Stu has gone mad, Billy gives an evil smile to Randy and says "We all go a little mad sometimes", then shoots Randy, who falls to the floor seemingly dead. Billy tells Sidney the blood on his chest is corn syrup (as used in the production of Carrie). Sidney turns and finds Stu, who unveils the voice-changing box.

Finally, the truth is revealed: The murders were planned and carried out by Billy and Stu, as a means for getting revenge on Sidney's mother. Sidney's mother had an affair with Billy's father, Hank Loomis (C. W. Morgan), and this was the reason for the demise of Billy's parents' marriage. It is also revealed that it was Billy who murdered Sidney's mother and not Cotton Weary, who was convicted of the murder based upon Sidney's testimony. Stu and Billy also reveal they have abducted Sidney's father and it was his cellphone they used to make their ominous phone calls. They plan to murder Sidney and frame her father as the killer by shooting him in the head, making it seem he committed suicide after the murders. Stu and Billy then stab each other in non-vital places so it appear that they're the only surviving victims of Sidney's father's rampage. Things begin to fall apart though when Billy stabs Stu too deeply and he begins to bleed profusely. Gale shows up and tries to shoot Billy, unfortunately the safety is on and he knocks her out. Billy is about to kill her when Stu notices Sidney is gone. Sidney manages to stab Billy with an umbrella and he collapses on the floor. Stu tries to kill Sidney but she gains the upper hand and pushes a television onto his head, killing him. Randy is shown to be still alive, which he credits to the fact that he's a virgin but Billy is still alive and attacks Randy. He then attacks Sidney and is about to stab her when Gale shoots him. Randy, back on his feet, warns Sidney that killers always "come back to life" for one last scare. Billy immediately springs to life and Sidney shoots him, finally killing him. Dewey is later shown being carried away in a stretcher, alive and conscious. Gale makes an impromptu report on the events of the previous night as the authorities finally arrive on the crime scene.

Main characters

  • Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott: Still deeply affected by the horrific murder of her mother, Maureen, Sidney suffers from intimacy issues and feels that she cannot satisfy her boyfriend, Billy Loomis. She testified against Maureen's lover, Cotton Weary, and holds a grudge against journalist Gale Weathers for accusing her of falsehood in her book about the crime. However, these issues soon become the last things on her mind when a masked psychopath begins stalking her school friends.
  • Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers: An ambitious journalist and author, who penned a book about the murder of Maureen Prescott, supposedly in a bid to exonerate prime suspect Cotton Weary. She appears to be a single-minded, heartless woman with a talent for deception, effortlessly manipulating almost everyone around her, including love struck deputy sheriff Dewey Riley.
  • David Arquette as Deputy Dwight 'Dewey' Riley: A kind, yet dopey police officer and older brother of Sidney's best friend, Tatum. He falls for the charms of journalist Gale Weathers and is stabbed on the back by the killer but survives.
  • Rose McGowan as Tatum Riley: Sidney's best friend, Stu Macher's girlfriend and younger sister of Officer Dewey Riley. She is later killed off during Stu's party, having her head crushed with an automatic garage door after attempting to escape from the killer when getting beer from the garage.
  • Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis: Sidney's boyfriend and one of the two actual killers in the film. He can easily project fear into people, such as Sidney, Stu and Randy, the latter of whom he threatens for implying that he's the killer. Billy went insane after his mother abandoned him, following her discovery of his father's affair with Maureen Prescott, whom he subsequently killed for revenge. A year later he and his accomplice, Stu Macher, continue their persecution of Maureen's daughter, Sidney, planning to slaughter and then posthumously frame her father for the gruesome murders of her friends.
  • Matthew Lillard as Stuart "Stu" Macher: Tatum's boyfriend and Billy's best friend. Stu is one of the two killers in the film. On the surface he seems like just another normal, slightly immature teenage boy; however, underneath his personality he is actually retarded and is killed when Sidney pushes a television on top of his head.
  • Jamie Kennedy as Randy Meeks: Randy is a friend of Sidney, Tatum and Stu, but not Billy. Kind of a nerd, Randy works in the local video store and considers himself an expert on horror films; indeed, he's the one who explains the rules of surviving a horror movie while at Stu's party. He barely survives the killings because of his previously lamented virginial status.

Minor characters

  • Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker: Casey appears in the opening scene of the film being alone in her house. While making Jiffy Pop popcorn and getting ready for her boyfriend Steven Orth to arrive to watch a horror film, Casey gets phone calls from a mysterious stranger who first starts off nice conversation then ends with a taunting and threatening one. Casey is forced to play a trivia game in which she must answer questions correctly to keep her boyfriend, who is strapped to one of her outside patio chairs, alive. Casey witnesses her boyfriend being disemboweled, and is then pursued by the killer herself. She is stabbed numerous times, before her horrified parents come home to see her bloody, gutted corpse hanging from a big oak tree across the road.
  • Henry Winkler as Principal Arthur Himbry: The school principal, he is fooling around in his office until someone knocks on the door, he opens the door and finds no one there, he goes out and checks for whoever knocked on his door but only finds the janitor, he goes back to his office, he closes the door and the killer appears, the killer stabbed him multiple times and he died.
  • Joseph Whipp as Sheriff Burke: The police sheriff who is continuously trying to track down the killer. He is shown to have a friendship with Dewey Riley.
  • Lawrence Hecht as Neil Prescott: Sidney's father. He is away on business and the suspicion of the killings are being heavily suspected upon him. The real killers, Billy and Stu abduct him and show him to Sidney during the film's near ending.
  • W. Earl Brown as Kenneth "Kenny" Jones: Gale Weather's cameraman. He has his throat slashed by the killer.
  • Kevin Patrick Walls as Steven Orth
  • Roger L. Jackson as Phone Voice (voice)
  • Carla Hatley as Mrs. Becker
  • David Booth as Mr. Becker
  • C. W. Morgan as Hank Loomis
  • Liev Schreiber as Cotton Weary

The film features numerous in-jokes and references to other horror projects. The victims in Scream are quite self-aware: they each make clear their familiarity with, and poke fun at, teen slasher and horror flicks, which sets up their fairly ironic responses to the film's situations.

Two of the most common references are to A Nightmare on Elm Street and its director Wes Craven. In the audio commentary for the DVD, Craven says that he almost took out the line where Casey Becker says the first A Nightmare on Elm Street was good but the rest sucked, because he thought it would make him seem egotistical. However, it was pointed out to him that he had co-written the third film and also wrote and directed the seventh. A Nightmare on Elm Street is also referenced in the high school janitor. Fred, played by Craven, wears an outfit resembling Freddy Krueger's. Later in the film, Tatum tells Sidney that she is "sounding like a Wes Carpenter flick", a fictional name created from compounding the names Wes Craven and John Carpenter (co-producer of the first three installments in the Halloween film series, co-writer of the first two, and director of the first).

At one point, Billy sneaks into Sidney's room through her window, startling her, in a way that quotes Glen sneaking into Nancy's room in A Nightmare on Elm Street. The similarity between the scenes in emphasized by the physical resemblance Skeet Ulrich, who plays Billy's character, bears to the young Johnny Depp, who played Glen's character.

Towards the end of the film, Sidney kills Stu, after a chase, by pushing a TV on to him. In Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, too, someone is killed by a TV when Freddie appear from the top of the set and pulls them up and in to the screen.

In addition to its director, Halloween is referenced many times throughout the film. When Casey's parents come home and see that something is wrong, her father says to her mother, "Drive down to the Mackenzies'", which is a quote from Halloween. During the party scene, Randy Meeks, Stu Macher and the other party goers are watching the horror film. They watch many famous scenes such as Michael Myers murdering Bob, as well as Laurie Strode discovering her friend's dead bodies scattered in the bedroom. The song that Billy puts on when he and Sidney are making out in her room is a cover version of "Don't Fear the Reaper" which was featured in Halloween in the scene where Laurie and Annie are driving to their babysitting jobs.

Billy's surname, Loomis, is the same as that of Donald Pleasence's character in Halloween (1978), which in turn was the name of Marion Crane's lover in Psycho. In a similar fashion to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), Scream's highly-billed star Drew Barrymore dies early in the film. Referring to Crane's similar premature murder, Robin Wood writes of the "alienation effect" of killing of the "apparent center of the film." In the later stages of the film, Billy Loomis quotes Norman Bates, saying "We all go a little mad sometimes." Licking his fake blood, Loomis says that it is actually corn syrup and food coloring, "the same stuff they used as pig's blood in Carrie".

As Stu and Billy reveal themselves to Sidney as the killers, they stand head to head, echoing a famous still photo from the film The Thing With Two Heads (1972).

When Casey (Drew Barrymore) is dragged across the lawn by her murderer it strongly resembles a scene from Dementia 13.

The blood pooling at Gale's (Courtney Cox) feet by the news van is reminiscent of a scene in Night of the Living Dead where blood pools on the floor by Barbra's feet (played by Judith O'Dea).

Many films are briefly mentioned during a scene in which Billy and Stu visit Randy at work at a video store. Films Randy mentions include Candyman, The Howling, Prom Night, Everybody's All-American. Frankenstein is showing on the monitors.

Sidney mentions The Town That Dreaded Sundown while she, Dewey and Tatum are buying food for the party.

During the party scene, the partygoers are struggling with which movie to watch. The possibilities include The Evil Dead, Hellraiser, The Fog and Terror Train. Clerks is seen as a videotape on top of a television. During the party scene, when Billy arrives, Randy exclaims "What's Leatherface doing here?". Leatherface is the antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

In addition to mentioning several horror films throughout the film, many minor characters were portrayed by actors that have worked with Wes Craven before and have also appeared in prominent horror films. For example, Linda Blair, who played Regan in "The Exorcist", also plays the obnoxious reporter who approaches Sidney when she first returns to school. Joseph Whipp, who plays Sheriff Burke in Scream, also plays the sheriff in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Frances Lee McCain, playing Mrs. Riley, also played the part of Billy's mother, Lynn Peltzer, in 1984's Gremlins.

Other films that are seen or mentioned throughout the film include:

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im Rose Ann Ramones, 18 years old from mariveles, bataan, PH.. taking up Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a second year student of Bataan Peninsula State University Main Campus to be transferred next academic year on Balanga Campus.. i am fond of reading, cooking, surfing the net, listening to music which depends on my mood.. im a reserve person, shy, hopeless romantic, dominant, abstract, introvert, feeler person..