Once John Carpenter’s Halloween had
been produced, the horror genre became repetitive copy-cats as lots of
directors started to imitate the conventions that were previously used within
Halloween. The horror genre become too unrealistic as audiences started to
become uninterested because the characters and plots were not relevant to real
life. Horror movies were too violent for no reason and in connection with this,
crime rates within society started to rise and therefore the horror genre
started to lose their audience. The violence was displayed in the movies
without punishment or consequences developing a moral panic as crimes were
blamed on the situations portrayed within films as the imitators would think it
is alright to act in such violence as they see the killers acting in a certain
way and getting away with it. Wes Craven was keen to change the perspective and
representation of the genre he loved and revived the horror genre with
‘Scream’.
Scream was a lot different to the
Horror films that had come before, it was new and comical in some parts of the
film. Wes Craven was eager to get rid of the clichés from the horror genre.
This was helped as the technology in his era had been developed. Wes Craven did
not use steadicam as much and instead used better editing to make sure the
stalking scenes still looked good and realistic in addition to this Wes Craven
added soundtracks to the stalking parts creating tension within the scene.
Scream also tends to mock conventions from earlier horrors such as “Never say
“who’s there?”” which gives Scream a humorous side, and makes the audience
laugh despite the situation and events that occur throughout the film, this
creates shock as the audience feels when the violence kicks in.
Before Scream was released females
within horror movies were represented negatively and were often shown to be
helpless and sexually objectified ; this
made most audiences see the films and
genre as sexist. This could also be a
contribution to why the horror genre lost its audiences as females stopped
watching films and decreased the popularity of the movies. This is contrasted
by Scream as the character Sidney is shown to be a lot smarter than the typical
‘damsel in distress’ and breaks the stereotype as she fights back. There is a balance between the victims
and their killers , throughout the film the victims inflict lasting injury on
the killer, before the females were just defeated. In Halloween no one is able
to fight back against Michael Myers and even when he is shot multiple times, he
survives again. Within scream the idea of the superhuman villain approach was
discarded as it had become cliché by
that time this differs because within Scream the killers were found to be local
boys from the community.
Scream used a number of big name
stars which also was a difference from Halloween. Halloween at this period of
time was low budget and used every day suburban locations which lacked special
effects, and big name star actors. Scream was obviously different as it used
Drew Barrymore, Courtney Cox and Neve Campbell, it was made more appealing to a
huge audience and females as they were able to see very well known female
actors and felt more involved within the genre compared to before.
Another difference between
Halloween and Scream was the music as the music in Halloween was very obvious
and the audience become aware of the scary part as the music picked up which
ruined the suspense and built no tension as the audience knew when something
was about to happen. However, In Scream the music was used more wisely and
efficiently, it also contained music that created an atmosphere and built
tension and suspense. They also used various different soundtracks for
different scenes so it did not obviously indicate when a scene was about to hit
a climax. This encouraged the audience of Horror genre to watch the film as
they were actually able to jump and be scared of the film rather than just know
when something was to happen, giving them time to brace themselves making the
Horror genre not scary.
Horror movies previous to Scream
were very obvious within the narrative. The audiences of the films became aware
of the plot quite early on, knowing who would die and who wouldn’t. They also
didn’t contain any plot twists and when they did it was obvious and the
audience felt let down as there was no challenge or surprise to the film.
Scream introduces a lot of plot twists to the genre and the audience were
always kept guessing. The ending would have also surprised a lot of the viewers
as Wes Craven used more than one killer and the psycho’s has understandable
reasons for their actions whereas in Halloween there was no evident reasons.
Overall, Scream brought back the
popularity for the horror genre that had been lost by horror movies
continuously copying and repeating each other and differed a lot from Halloween and other early horror
films. Scream changed many aspects of the horror genre including soundtrack,
actors and the plot. Scream also added a sense of humour which surprised the
audience but also brought back the audience for the horror genre.
