This is the face of your nightmares!
I love horror. I am a huge defender of the medium in all its forms and my affair with all things gory, scary, thrilling and suspensful (my danse macabre, you might say?) has continued for about as long as I can remember. Every once in a while, I get a horror itch - a need to delve back into the genre and just revel. This was the itch I experienced on Sunday 30th of September, 2015. I found myself in HMV perusing the shelves and my eye fell on Scream 4, most recent entry in a franchise that I love dearly and so I decided to complete my collection. I didn't know, as I picked up the film, that the director of it, creator of the Scream franchise and altogether iconic film maker was living his final hours upon this earth, nearing the end of his struggle with brain cancer.
Wes Craven passed away later that day.
One's relationship with one's favourite horror film-maker is always curious: the person whom you so admire is the same person who has likely tortured your mind some evenings and nights. I still remember when I was young overhearing that my sister was going to watch a film that I was absolutely not allowed to watch. I sneaked in to the room to glimpse the first scene of Scream and ran hell-for-leather after seeing Drew Barrimore hanging lifeless and bloodied from a tree. Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors gave me one of my earliest full-blown recurring nightmares - the opening scene where Patricia Arquette thinks she has woken up and then the taps suddenly grab her hands gives me chills to this day.
And is set in a bathroom, doubling the desire to wet yourself.
That's just me, but think about it - what would the landscape of modern horror look like today without Wes Craven and movies like these? Without Nightmare on Elm Street, without The Hills Have Eyes, without Scream, without Last House on the Left? These movies aren't just landmarks in the horror genre, they shaped the genre itself.
Scream was a particular feather in Craven's hat as it was not only a well-made horror film, but a love-letter to the genre, and fans appreciated it as such. Often, self-referential films come off as a bit heavy-handed, but Craven achieved the perfect kind of parody, pointing out the flaws in the genre and improving upon them. This kind of integrity in and reverence of the creation of horror varied in the sequels, but when Scream 4 was first considered, Craven said that he would not even think about directing until he thought the script was as good as the first Scream. This was not a man looking to make a quick buck. This was a man wanting to create great movies.
Scream 4 is not the best Scream movie. Certainly, I think it misses the greatness of the first one, but in the light of Craven's death, it does, in my opinion, take on a new significance. You see, the franchise is all about the creation of horror: the rules that go with them, the cliches, the pitfalls, the wonder and the fun. Scream 4 is no different, but, released fifteen years after the original, it is all about how the new wave of filmmakers are creating horror movies. Stage cameras are swapped for webcams. Movie buffs are now bloggers (it's like he knows my life!). Every five minutes there is a reference to the ridiculousness of reboots and remakes in the horror franchise. Now, one might expect Craven to criticise, harking back to the glory days of horror cinema, but this is not the case. Craven, with Scream 4, is diligently, gleefully, celebrating the genre as it exists today. It isn't making fun - it's passing the torch.
Watching this film, one cannot help but think about the innumerable directors, writers, reviewers, actors, and fans that are working today as a result of the inspiration that Wes Craven provided, and while Scream 4 modestly suggests that it can roll with the times, we as fans must proudly proclaim that these times would not exist but for people like him.
Wes Craven was known as a fun-loving man, a practical joker on set. He was a man who would never make a film for the paycheck. He was an artist who cared deeply about everything that he made, and its impact upon the genre. Horror, especially the slasher subset, is a divisive genre and there is plenty of discussion to be had about it's worth. But in the centre of that discussion sat a hard-working, genuine man with a love and integrity towards his craft that must be admired.
He has inspired me, and I thank him for it.
“If I have to do the rest of the films in the [horror] genre, no problem. If I’m going to be a caged bird, I’ll sing the best song I can[...] I can see that I give my audience something. I can see it in their eyes, and they say thank you a lot. You realize you are doing something that means something to people. So shut up and get back to work." - Wes Craven
That's a wrap.
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