Creepy film

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2005)

Desensitization, on a couple of levels - but really only the most painful, and superficial. The plot concerns Billy (Ulrich/Depp - could have sworn it was Johnny Depp, or Johnny Depp playing James Dean - I don't know - Ulrich probably gets a lot of that) and Stu's acting out their obsession with horror films, shared by friend Randy, who is not quite as far gone as Billy and Stu. It's Columbine, 1999, in effect; although other school shootings took place before and since the release of this movie for Christmas 1996 (according to IMDb). Like those real life killers, this movie tries to portray real life killers of its own who have lost their sense of self, from whatever personal grief and problems, to the horror film genre. They now consider real life to be a movie, but perhaps just without all the horror/slasher film 'rules' that Randy would place on it.
Williamson, in the trailer/documentary, says that a horror movie, particularly the 'slasher' film I would guess, is therapeutic and a good emotional release. Bates didn't really kill anyone in Psycho. It was just a movie. It's always just a movie. Movies never encourage actions or influence real life. Oh - of course. Laugh, scream and hold each other tight. It does at least encourage that. But the problem with Scream is that it's a movie about . . movies. The characters actually discuss the corn syrup blood. And right after that, they expect the audience to believe that's not corn syrup and sound effects in the next scene. (It was the problem in the adventure/comedy with Tim Allen about space aliens - one minute, in the studio, next minute it's supposed to be real? why? walk us through it, Mr. director) And if the whole thing is phony, and seen as phony, and known to be, and so much of it is telegraphed, if there's no real expectation that the audience will suspend their disbelief, but rather sit in the director's chair behind the lights spouting clichés and watching the cameraman, then I think it bothers me. It's a depiction of what's supposed to be, in some way, a murder conspiracy involving two vicious serial killers. And yet it's played for . . laughs, for entertainment. It's a bit lazy. It's no Hitchcock. And that wasn't the subtext in Psycho, either; or in Silence of the Lambs, for that matter. The excuse, here, would be that because it's not real, these aren't political prisoners fed to the lions in the arena, for example. Murder can be entertainment, when it's fake. Just so it's not that sort of murder. This isn't Auschwitz. The actors are not wearing stars. It cannot desensitize.
Well, golly, sure it can. If some say this film doesn't cause one to identify with the killers, possibly they're wrong. The killers not only see life as a film. They see themselves as part of the cast. But because this is a wink at movies, and the horror/slasher film specifically, the audience sees the killers as actors in a film, and literally as part of the cast - as they playact at random human slaughter, discussing horror movies, all the while. It's real. It's not. It's all in good fun, as the obviously fake bodies, and scenarios, hang around and goof around, and lay around until they pop up again as if at a Halloween haunt at the local amusement park. No one dies. There is no death. As the killers basically say - life is just as unreal as a movie.
Looked at another way, the plot is simple, as Randy says is a hard and fast rule. But it's not a rule, in . . other horror classics, apart from the exploitation flicks they take care to mention. This film is sloppy. And the 'cleverness' is meant to disguise that failing. Silence of the Lambs was simple, in a way - but not stupid. Scream is not supposed to be Airplane '1996', either. And yet it has more in common with that sort of thing, or with a Wayans Bros. comedy, than Silence of the Lambs. The opening scene, with Drew Barrymore, plays like a fiction, from the start. You expect to zoom out to see people in a theatre, or that the protagonist is merely writing a novel (and that is briefly the suggestion in the following scene). The film gets off to a bad start just trying to establish that these murders were part of the protagonist's reality. And it gets more confusing, in scene after scene. And what exactly . . is . . the point of the father - who just gets tossed in, perhaps as the embodiment of yet another horror flick 'rule'? He goes crazy and kills half the town? That's the killer's plan to frame him? And so on.
A movie within a movie doesn't seem to work for just any film. It might work in an old musical. It might work as some annoying flashback (which are often overdone). But if that, rather than the killer pair, is the real gimmick of this movie, then a movie long joke about whether it is or it isn't fails simply because everyone knows it . . . isn't (and can remember the cost of the ticket/vid/DVD). Maybe, in that light, it's therapeutic (for potential serial killers)? I don't know. Maybe it's just sick. Maybe it's a depiction of a certain disturbed, homicidal, lunatic geek fringe, and not intended to be a suggestion for behavior even to same? It's creepy on so many levels. Maybe the same audience would appreciate, 'SAW II'. I just don't know.