AKA a trashy, horny and dull flat line with all the charm and depth of an egg cup.
1/5 screams
SPOILERS AHEAD AND MATURE CONTENT:
Recently I’ve been on a bit of a horror-comedy binge. For those of you who know me, I know you’ll be shocked by this. I’ve always been very, very, anti-horror-comedies. I think, mainly, for most of the reasons i’ll give in this review. They tend to be generic bloodbaths with the odd dark joke or laugh thrown in. I’ve always hated them, so I decided to conduct an experiment. I watched two in one night and decided to compare them mentally. I was going to do a contrast review between ‘Girls with Balls’ and ‘Cockneys Vs Zombies’ but realised that if I were to concentrate on comparing the two then I might lose the initial spark, the description and intimacy.
As part of this curiosity study, I watched it like I would have done at thirteen. Open-minded, unaware of tropes and cliches and reader reception theory. An English teacher I had for A levels once joked that his marriage ended because English destroys your brain so that you can longer enjoy a book or film without intensely over-analysing it. It’s a tough ole’ life being a writer, what can I say. Anyway, back at the ranch this film is a synthetic, shallow exploration of, well, basically nothing.
Even early on in the narrative you can sense the bland atmosphere. There’s no hook, nothing intriguing or even eye-catching. When a film is so uninteresting that you spend the run time scrolling through Twitter, this is not a compliment to the film. One of my main problems with it is the characterisation. The MC’s are unlikeable, nothingy, hypersexualised and as interesting as cotton wool. How are we meant to care about the deaths, the blood, the chaos when the characters themselves are just dull – cardboard dialogue, attempts to be comedic that just crash and burn as they leave the actors’ mouths. BUT, for Morgan’s sexy dance scene…I can forgive them a little.
Side note: who on earth is the singing narrator? Which of the writers of this travesty decided ‘oh, you know what we really need here – a guy with a guitar who plays no real role in the movie, just pops up now and then to sing country narrations’. Just..what? He does not add anything to the film. He’s not amusing or necessary. The first thing that did actually make me laugh was as blondie tries this odd stripping sequence whilst wearing a falcon helmet. As she begins to show her breasts, the two men begin making out and this subverted expectation actually does work pretty well as a small laughing prompt.
I have an issue with Morgan – I’m sorry but her stabbing the team leader twice with a machete just comes straight out of nowhere. Okay, she’s a bit of a bitch but there’s a pretty large difference between being a dick and being a murderer. Jesus, imagine if they were the same. My dating history would just be a list of straight up psychopaths. But, I digress, two of the most visually interesting sequences are two that, I will admit, did make me think. Firstly, the f***ing chihuahua scene. Warn me, people! I cannot cope with dogs dying…it wasn’t funny, just sad and gross. Why, just why? Also the headless body – what is with that guy? I mean it’s not exactly Mike the chicken here (If you have no idea what i’m talking about, please google ‘Mike the chicken’ he lived for two years without his head. What a legend. “Come at me bitches, I’m not becoming nuggets’.) and he stumbles around seemingly with consciousness, for flipping ages. Ugh.
Returning to chickens, briefly, the only scene that made me jump was when an unexpected chicken appears from the bushes. Now, that’s not exactly a compliment for the movie. As I mentioned, the characters are so underdeveloped and so are the villains. They’re not intimidating, disgusting or even interesting. How can you have any emotional connection, fear or disgust when the villains don’t even utter one word of dialogue. We are completely unaware of their motivations, their flaws, their narcissistic pathologies. All we see are men in dress up with a bit of face paint. Bad, bad writing ya’ll. Seriously, this film was 1 hour 17 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Second side note: using your only phone call to scald a cheating boyfriend is just utterly ridiculous.
One thing I realised, this film could’ve been fantastic if it was an exploration of Morgan’s devolution into madness and murderous impulses. If it was a character piece, like ‘American Mary’ or ‘Maniac’ it could have been a great watch. But instead we’re given a monotonous, drab and wearisome hunting flick that neither raises your adrenaline nor holds your attention for more than five minutes.
Overall, this film is a tedious, bland, tired rehash of every teen slasher flick, complete with every weatherworn cliche and kinky stereotype to hook in horny preteens. It has no goals, depth or intelligence. (Sadly, I did write far more than this about this particular flick at about 2am last night but somehow didn’t save 3/4 of it so I’ve tried my best to regurgitate the main points).
“The moral of our story, as you can plainly see, defend yourself from rapists by learning to volley”. Okay…but they weren’t rapists?
I am so done with this film. Ugh. Do yourself a favour and don’t watch it. Just…don’t.
Don't Scream 