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'Scream' returns to satirize new 'golden era' of horror
Twenty-five years ago, Scream revitalized horror with its highly self-aware take on the increasingly stale slasher genre. This Friday, the new Scream arrives in an era of socially aware arthouse horror.
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In this file photo taken on April 11, 2011 actors Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette arrive at the premiere of The Weinstein Company's 'Scream 4' held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California. (AFP/Kevin Winter/Getty Images North America)
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wenty-five years ago, Scream -- starring Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox -- revitalized horror with its highly self-aware take on the increasingly stale and formulaic slasher genre.
This Friday, a film again entitled Scream -- again starring Campbell and Cox -- returns to breathe new life into the... you get the idea.
"Thank God we are working in a franchise, and in a universe, where it's okay for a movie to be wildly self-reflexive," co-director Tyler Gillett told AFP.
"There were more instances of that meta experience than we can count when we were making the movie."
Just like in the 1996 original, characters in the new Scream spend much of the plot debating the tropes of horror movies in order to guess which one of them -- female? Black? virgin? -- will be killed off next.
They realize that the latest swathe of attacks in their bafflingly violent California hometown are targeting people related to the killers from 25 years before.
Handily, one character explains horror audiences' new fondness for "requels" -- films that follow chronologically from previous movies, but reboot the franchise with younger characters related to the original cast.
