Scream (1996)

 ‘Scream’ is another slasher film directed by Wes Craven, who also directed ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’.  The story consists of a serial killer known as ‘Ghost face’, who calls girls and threatens them, before murdering them. The narrative starts off by showing the murder of two teenagers, a boy and girl, which causes their school to be closed, in order to investigate the cause of their death. However, this leads onto a chain of recurring murders.

Scream conforms very well to the typical rules of a slasher film, as to how the characters can survive from the killer. For example, the concept they shouldn’t have sex, drugs, alcohol or say “I’ll be back”. The film is combined with comedy, as well as with the violence of the slasher genre, as Craven wanted to satirize the cliché of the horror genre. This relates to Todorov’s argument that “a new genre is always the transformation of one or several old genres”. The film was considered unique at the time, as it featured characters who were aware of the real world horror films and openly discussed the cliché that scream tried to subvert. This refers to Steve Neale’s claim that “genres are instances of repetition and difference”. This film also follows the conventions of the concept of a slasher film, as it is mainly to do with Innocence vs. Sexuality.  Like other slasher films, there is also an iconic weapon used, which for this instance is a knife, which was also used in Halloween (1978).

This leads onto the Final Girl theory by Clover (1992), which specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, and the one who is apparently left to tell the story. According to Clover, the final girl shares common characteristics as she is typically supposed to be sexually unavailable or a virgin, who avoids the vices of the victims, for example, sex, illegal drug use, alcohol consumption etc. However, in Scream we encounter subversion to this as towards the end of the film, Sidney has sex with her boyfriend and therefore, no longer stays a virgin. Despite this, she still manages to be the final girl and confront the killer and survive.  Also, according to Clover, the final girl tends to have a unisex name, which the film follows, as the main characters name is Sidney. Another claim made by Clover is that the final girl may likely have a shared history with the killer which, in Scream, is revealed in the end. This is because Sidney’s mum is killed by her boyfriend as his dad was having an extra marital affair with Sidney’s mum. We also come across a similar scenario in Scream 3, where the killer is revealed to be Roman Bridger who is half-brother of the sole survivor, Sidney Prescott.