Quote:
Originally Posted by Sculpt
Interesting take on issue of Scream and the films of the era.
My quick reply is I think there is room for films like Scream. Viva la deference.
It's just one film. But true, it's success spawned more films of the type... the forever film trend of most producers chasing dollars, not art, originality or tradition.
I wasn't a fan of Scream, but I mildly enjoyed it. I liked certain parts, but mostly didn't like the end. The end was more akin to bad 80's horror; and a slice of the 90's 'killer that won't stay dead' trope... but it was a film about horror tropes, so I guess it's 'par for the course'  .
You're not wrong... Scream was written by Kevin Williamson who created/wrote Dawson Creek, Vampire Diaries and I Know What You Did Last Summer. However, I didn't find Scream overly soap-opera-ish. It just had a little more meat and character development to me.
I appreciated different horror 'types' and 'trends' through horror history, like Dracula (1931), King Kong (1933), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1954), The Exorcist (1974), Halloween (1979)� I appreciate character development as an excellent addition to horror films. Films can specializes away from it, like say Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I was no fan of late 70's-through-80's hack repetitious boobs/kill/gore machine. I was happy to see the era produce films like Alien, The Thing, Poltergeist, and The Fly.
Suffice is to say, Scream was just one film to me. I'm glad it was different, and that it helped add finance to more horror -- and you hope to original horror, but everyone knows it will spawn copies too. Some folks are happy Halloween (1979) spawned twelve Friday the 13th films... people like different stuff. |
If it had less of an impact on mainstream horror, I wouldn't hate it so much. Like if there was just a handful of movies like that to come out instead of almost everything.
I do see what you're getting at though. The 80's was really hit and miss, lots of greatness but lots of crap too. Every genre becomes cookie cutter and done to death after it becomes popular. There are a few genres though that even the subpar stick to the formula copies I like, slashers for instance (in the 70s and 80s vein).
I'm not against character development at all, I just hate the way it was done in the teen slasher genre of the 90s/early 2000s. NOES, Halloween, Exorcist. Phantasm, they all had character development but in a completely different way. I don't need every horror movie to be action packed, I have a longer attention span than that. It is necessary for impact to have developed characters terrified, killed etc so it gets a reaction out of you, not just here's a character 5 seconds later dead. I agree with you there. Almost every movie that is truly scary, is slow. I do like some action/horror for a change here and there but there is no way I'd want only that.
I was wrong on the year too, 96, it was the same year TFTC got taken off air. There was some really good stuff at the time too, like In the Mouth of Madness and Lord of Illusions, it's really a shame that those movies weren't ripped off instead.
Torture porn ran it's course, even though I really liked some of those movies I really don't think it should go on forever and it had its dung pile copies too. Found footage I'm glad to see go to but I really never was into that.
Retro horror I honestly hope it never dies and would love to see some 70s worship. The genre hasn't been too saturated yet, even though it has been in the mainstream to a degree.