I haven’t set foot in a movie theater since a 2019 showing of Parasite. Most of that is due to COVID caution. The rest, though, is just malaise. It might be pandemic-related. But even when I’ve watched new movies at home over the past three years, I’ve been totally underwhelmed.
This isn’t the case with all the movies I’ve watched for the first time during this pandemic. Just the ones released during it.
The new Scream movie is out. I love the Scream series. I’ve loved it since I saw the first one at the tender, very tender, age of five. Its murder mystery elements, its sparse writing, and its genuine thrills and empathy still earn it a place in the pantheon of modern horror masterpieces.
Scream also ushered in the era of self-referential irony and trope-savvy characters. And we’ve been paying for it ever since.
In Scream 2, the murderer’s obsession with getting a trial is a fun jab at the post-O.J. media climate. In 3, a skeezy Hollywood producer’s unsympathetic revelations about actresses having to trade sex for acting jobs becomes all too disquieting when you realize the Weinsteins executive produced the first four Scream movies. The killer’s motive in Scream 4 seems altogether wackadoo and horribly plausible: viral fame and a book deal.
Whether it’s horror movies in general, the sleazy tabloid mechanisms of the 90s, the seedy underbelly of Hollywood power structures, or the valorization—and media consumption—of victimhood, the series always layers some genuinely profound ideas between its savage, knife-wielding scenes of mayhem.
Despite these cultural commentaries, the series really didn’t hit us over the head too hard with these themes. They figured we’d pick up on them. Movies and the people who made them actually used to trust us to read between the lines.
And even when they did hit you over the head, you could forgive them because they didn’t take themselves too seriously.
The first four Scream movies found a balance between slasher movie conventions, cultural commentary, and flesh-and-blood characterization. If the horror movies they were making today were half as good as their makers seem to think they are, that might suggest a new Scream would seem perfectly at home in the year 2022.
I haven’t seen the new installment yet. Judging from what I’ve seen these past few years, Scream 5 will probably follow the trends, not set them.
Another movie I didn’t see—there are so many— was Halloween Kills. I wanted to, but I couldn’t work up the desire. The bits and pieces I’ve seen aren’t encouraging.
One YouTube clip sees Charles Cyphers originating his role as Sheriff Leigh Brackett. He, along with the other perennially-stalked citizens of Haddonfield, Illinois are confronting the masked killer Michael Myers for a “final” showdown.
Cyphers, without any prompting, reason, or… logic, repeats a now-famous line (to fans of the series, anyway) from the original film, “We’re all entitled to one good scare.”
Narratively, it serves no purpose. It’s a patronizing wink. A callback as rote and nonsensical as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “I’ll be back” after the sixth or seventh time he said it onscreen. A reminder to the audience that they are… seen? Loved? Maybe that’s thrilling for other people. For me, it just robs the scene of any tension. It doesn’t break the fourth wall. It kneecaps it.
When the character said this in the original movie, it had a purpose. It felt natural, appropriate to the character and the moment. It’s a phrase he tosses off, not knowing what the audience knows, that they’re all in for more than just “one” good scare. This is what infuses the quote with any meaning at all.
My question is this: When did it become okay for characters to speak like fans? Scream gets a pass. It’s self-referential only insofar as the characters have seen all the scary movies we have. But what came after, that combination of self-reflexive media and fan culture brought on by superhero movies and the mainstreaming of fantasy has made so many genre movies insufferable.
David Gordon Green’s first reboot sequel, Halloween (2018), is full of these references to previous films in the series. Most of them are harmless little sprinkles of worldbuilding. Some defy logic.
The most egregious of these fourth-wall fabric tears, that I can remember anyway, is an exchange where Jamie Lee Curtis, as the Unabomber-fied Laurie Strode, says to Michael Myers’ new psychiatrist, “So you’re the new Loomis.”
Referring to the original character played by Donald Pleasance, Curtis’ line sticks out precisely because it’s how I imagine a fan describing this new character to someone who had seen the original. “Oh yeah, then there’s this doctor. He’s like the new Loomis.”
I think what bothers me most about these examples is that they completely betray the characters. And for what? All for the sake of getting the audience to say, “Hey, I see what you did there.” They’re gif-able moments. Easter eggs. Hidden in plain sight. Designed for audiences who have gotten so used to searching for Easter eggs we’ve stopped hiding them. Instead, we just put in more Easter eggs.
That goes for themes and subtext as well. As damaged as Sydney Prescott was in those other Scream movies, I never had to sit through monologues where the entire thesis of the character was spelled out. If she did monologue for a bit, it felt earned.
In today’s genre movies, you’re lucky if you get something as subtle as a character slapping you and yelling “TRAUMA” in your face.
That’s what we were constantly being told Halloween (2018) was about. Trauma. But really, it’s about how every terrible thing Laurie Strode imagines about the world is warranted. Her holing up in a fortified castle with every kind of gun known to man is justified. If the movie weren’t so up its own ass about being about something, I could let this slide. It’s just a dumb horror movie after all.
But in making this semi-serious attempt to be about something, really about something, it kinda becomes an inadvertent defense of doomsday-prepping, rightwing nuttery.
I think if Halloween (2018) weren’t so gung-ho about pretending to be a character study, it wouldn’t fall into traps like this. It’s not a bad horror movie. It’s just biting off way more than it can chew.
Halloween Kills is, apparently, a two-fer. It’s about trauma and… *drum roll* mob violence. If the sequel is as sloppy as the first, I don’t even want to consider the political implications of that.
People who disliked Halloween Kills were hit with this response: It’s just a dumb horror movie.
I know that. The problem is the movie itself doesn’t think so.
The other problem is I do love dumb genre films. But these ones are pretending to be something more, something important.
Again, let’s be clear. I haven’t seen Scream 5 or Halloween Kills. I just feel like I have.
It doesn’t matter what series it belongs to or the makers behind it, genre movies of the last few years seem to be aiming for the same audience, the same reaction, and the same box office returns.
None of this is new. Self-referential texts are not new. Stories have been told and retold since long before movies and TV even existed. The truest myths need new angles, new modes, new aesthetics, new points of view. Same salad, different dressing.
But what’s missing, to me, is the point of view. The dressing.
It’s insane to think this era of supposed “elevated content” and “diversified programming” has created such an echo chamber. What’s the point of diversifying the voices telling stories when the stories themselves have no point of view? Without that, they’re just properties.
I think the filmmakers working in these modes are talented. But in writing and creating stories that are feedback loops for fans, they rob us and the culture of something necessary. Their meta-dialogue validates the audience’s nostalgia, leaving their minds unchallenged and their empathy only mildly piqued, while neglecting the very real and pressing themes they claim to be exploring.
Audience pandering, didacticism, and unearned social significance doesn’t just make today’s genre movies unimaginative, it robs them of tension, stakes, joy, and impact.
This is all just to say—I’m discontented.
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What I’m Watching: Someone posted the entire Port Charles Hotel Fire storyline from the 2004 season of General Hospital on YouTube. It’s like The Towering Inferno, but with more characters and cheaper effects. I also started watching The Golden Palace for the first time! I’d only see a few sporadic episodes of the Golden Girls spin-off before Hulu added it to its catalog in light of Betty White’s recent death. It’s worth a look, especially if you, like me, have seen each episode of The Golden Girls several times over. It’s nice to be surprised by some jokes you haven’t heard the girls tell before.
What I’m Reading: No one does harsh, incisive criticism like the literary world. This Andrea Long Chu piece on the trauma-prodding literature of Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life) is a must-read. This passage, in particular, made me raise my eyebrows and sip my electrolyte beverage like a Real Housewife: “In truth, Jude is a terribly unlovable character, always lying and breaking promises, with the inner monologue of an incorrigible child. The first time he cuts himself, you are horrified; the 600th time, you wish he would aim.”
What I’m Listening To:
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The Red Sweater will be updated once per… let’s just say it’ll be updated once, periodically, until the end of time. It will cover developments in my life, work, and all the stupid little things I care about. More of my writing can be found at Medium and on my website.