Back of the Cereal Box: Camp Song, Ecuador, and Sexy Koopa Shells
Posted by ashtonstory on January 31, 2009
Indeed, I do assume that greed is a motivating factor here, and not some belief that some aspect of the Scream saga needs to be told again or some desire to once more parody the slasher films of the 80s. After all, those movies with their photogenic, talentless serial killer fodder arent even the dominant off-shoot of the horror genre anymore: Its now Hostel-style gore flicks and bloodless remakes of Asian fright flicks. (The latter of which became a profitable type of movie only in the wake of The Ring, the script for which was written by Ehren Krueger, who took over the writing duties for Scream 3 after Williamson bailed to work Wasteland, his short-lived TV series follow up to Dawsons Creek. And the torture porn and J-horror retreads already get mocked by the Scary Movie series, which itself began as a parody of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and even takes its name from the Screams working title.
As most do, the Scream series deteriorated with each sequel, but not by much, at least, with Scream 2. Scream 3 did not fare as well, but even at the hands of a less talented screenwriter less familiar with the series, it still managed to offer some neat ideas, including some novel takes on the series-spanning theme of life and death interacting with the their representations in Hollywood. But though it ended the series with a series with more of a whimper than was deserved by the gasp of air that was the first movie.
No, the Scream series doesnt need to extend into the new millennium, for the reasons I just mentioned greed shouldnt extend the life of movie franchises, the target of the series humor has been pretty well staked, the world may have moved to far beyond the point where a pop culture-saturated horror seems necessary but also for my own indefensible, personal reason: I want to keep the 90s where they belong. For me, Scream was and is this particular time period in such away that I dont look forward to watching some latter-day, tacked-on sequel try and absorb the pop culture that we now have ten years down the line. It can try, of course, and it might even succeed, but Id much prefer to leave Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3 in the same time period that allowed the bands appearing on their soundtracks to be popular. (Take a look at them, if you have a chance, and get a refresher in recently forgotten bands: Sugar Ray, Tonic, Less Than Jake, Orgy, System of a Down, Fuel even Creed, for gods sake. Scary indeed.) Really, if theres ever any hope for horror movies, one of the few to actually fit in that category should know better than to slowly let the life drain out of it over the course of endless sequels.
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