Watching YouTube Naked at 1am

Give me the simple life

I saw Scream VI the other night. I hadn’t seen Scream 4 or 5 - in fact nobody’s seen Scream 5 because for some reason they called the fifth Scream movie simply “Scream”, which is pretty stupid because then they called the next one “Scream VI”. It’s fine to restart the sequence like they did with Halloween (2018), which although (I think) the eleventh Halloween movie was actually a direct sequel to the first Halloween movie, which was also just called Halloween (1978). But the point is, that having called the new movie simply Halloween, they didn’t then call the sequel to Halloween (2018) “Halloween XII”, now did they?

Scream VI is not as good as the recent Halloweens, although it’s much better than most Halloween movies, because most Halloween movies are pretty bad. That was the 80s for you. And a bit of the 90s too.

Scream VI is fine. It’s got Ghostface running around killing people horribly, so it’s difficult to fault it too much. If you go to a Scream movie and expect anything more than Ghostface running around killing people horribly, that’s your problem.

Although the fact that it’s your problem is the series’ problem, because actually the original Scream - in fact to greater or lesser extent the first three Screams - promised much more than that. The whole point of the original Scream was that it was a genuine slasher film that also made fun of slasher films, and that it was therefore both funny and clever.

But somewhere along the line they drifted from that, and Scream movies are no longer sly comedy-horrors subverting the same stereotypes they themselves employ. Now they are just bog-standard slasher films in which occasionally pretty young people make pithy quips and someone makes a speech about the narrative rules of horror franchises. Because successive filmmakers decided that the reason the first Scream was good was that pretty young people made pithy quips and there was a speech about the narrative rules of horror franchises. The overall spirit of the exercise was jettisoned in favour of box-ticking.

Of course, the nasty and inventive methods of offing characters has stayed around, which is all to the good, so don’t get me wrong: it is still fun to see Ghostface sticking his knife in people and occasionally doing some other revolting thing to them for variety’s sake.

It’s funny that I am making this observations really, because as I said above, a) I haven’t seen the fourth or fifth movies, and b) the first three movies all had at least a little of the first one’s energy. So how come I went into Scream VI with no expectation of that energy?

I don’t know, I guess I just absorbed through osmosis the idea that Scream had exhausted its mojo to some extent. Or more likely, it is because ever since the first one came out in 1996, slasher films have been mechanically copying the formula over and over again. Near-supernatural Michael Myers killer, except with a whodunnit mixed in as well, pretty young people being pithy, genre meta-analysis and self-aware audience winks.

And that’s why I blame I Know What You Did Last Summer for the decline of the Scream franchise. Because IKWYDLS was the first Scream wannabe that came out, did huge business, and showed that aping Wes Craven’s moves while not really understanding them was a route to box office gold.

I mean, have you seen I Know What You Did Last Summer? It’s so freaking bad. Scream VI is definitely better than that. I’m getting angry thinking about it.

Anyway, like I said, Scream VI is fine. But like a lot of movies nowadays, horror or otherwise, it’s a huge missed opportunity. There’s a line in the movie “I’m not like the other Ghostfaces” - that kind of sums it up. Because, without giving any spoilers, sure, this Ghostface is different to other Ghostfaces - but not THAT different. I’d have loved to have seen a REALLY different Ghostface. A much scarier Ghostface, for example: a Ghostface whose relentlessness and indestructibility and sheer demonic sadism is dialled up way past eleven. A Ghostface who is truly scary, who puts the fear of God into everyone on screen and off not just by stabbing people, but by the cold bestial frenzy that he delivers straight from Hell.

OR! A funny Ghostface. A Ghostface who is like Deadpool, giving running commentary and breaking the fourth wall.

Or…you know how often in movies of this kind, the hero or heroine at some point is suspected of being the killer? Why not make one where they actually ARE? Why not take one of the theories being spouted by the “horror nerd” of the cast (and incidentally, the new horror nerd is so very much not a patch on Jamie Kennedy) and make it come true?

Why not make a Scream where Ghostface IS the hero? Why not problematise the whole thing by making the murderer the good guy, and refusing to walk it back?

I know why they don’t make Screams like this. It is because the series is not in the hands of anyone creative: it is in the hands of businesspeople who have taken note of what people pay money to see, and hired creative people to make exactly that and under threat of career detonation not use their creativity in any way.

But anyway. It’s fine. I just wish actors would stop going on press junkets and talking about how interesting their characters’ journeys are this time around. We’re just waiting for you to stab or be stabbed. Join us here.

The Weekly List

A List Of Novels That I Am Planning To Write. Please Let Me Know Which Ones You Are Most Excited About

Gippsland

The XI

Body Corporate

Dirty Pool

Untitled Elizabethan Time Travel Project

Untitled Goblin Detective Project

Untitled Joan of Arc Superhero Project

Hart Wexford: The Unauthorised Biography

The Lemz Majestic

Faith

Saving Hitler

The End

The Shape I’m In

Adventures In Psychiatry

Cruel And Unusual

Lizzie Thunderbolt, Girl Bushranger

The Expert

The Duke

Aubrey Faulkner, Secret Agent

The Weekly Plugs

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A Plug For Someone Else: the always excellent Freddie deBoer wrote this piece entitled “Of Course You Know What Woke Means”. I like it a lot, and it does give a comprehensive definition of “wokeness” that is broadly speaking the one I would use - and importantly, NOT the one that right-wing cretins use when they claim that wokeness sent Silicon Valley Bank bust. Not that I will use the word “woke” if I can help it - I’m more likely to just say, “this is stupid”. But if you ever catch me criticising woke, you can assume I’m using Freddie’s definition. So there.