Scream 1996 (Slasher Film)

Scream

The movie poster for Scream (1996)

The movie Scream (1996), directed by Wes Craven, took place in a small town called Woodsboro. It starts off with a young attractive girl alone at home getting a phone call from a mysterious person. The mood is dark and eerie while the young girl and the mysterious person talk about their favorite horror movies. The conversations become more aggressive and violent, and the young girls boyfriends life becomes threatened, then her own. Both of them die and the news breaks out at school. There are reporters surrounds the school. The main character, Sidney Prescott's mother was recently murdered a year prior. While this is happening she is living with the trauma of her dead mother. Not too long after the first murders, Sidney becomes the next target. It seems as if her boyfriend, Billy Loomis, is able to protect her. He is often there at the right times and is able to comfort her. When the school becomes a threatening place they decide to call off school for the rest of the semester. The troubles begin at an 'end of the year' high school party. The killer is revealed to be Sidneys boyfriend, Billy, and his best friend Stu that worked together to torture innocent friends and family.

Sidney talking to Ghostface.

In the film, Sidney often hears about her mother being a slut. There is a lot of slut shaming going around about her mother saying the claims of her mother being raped is false, and that she deserved to be killed because she was flashy and easy. Sidney lives a completely different type of life from how people think her mother lived  by being a virgin throughout most of the film, and being almost afraid of sex. Her boyfriend Billy and her guy friend Stu joked about Sidneys virginity and peer pressured her to have sex with Billy. Sidney looks like an average girl with a beautiful face and never overly sexualized in my opinion. Her best friend, Tatum Riley, is the rebellious type who often hung all over her boyfriend. Her character most of the time had hard nipples and she was usually sucking on a lollypop or another object. Tatum was very supportive of Sidney and took care of her until she was killed. Another main female character was a news reported, Gale Weathers, ironic. Sidney hated Gale because Gale was the reporter that was the contradicting side of the Sidneys mothers case. At the end of the film these women were about to come together and gain the power to kill the faces of Ghostface together.

The Final Three.

The killer Billy and Sidney both have missing mother figures in their lives. Billy killed Sidneys mother because her mother was the reason why his mother left. His father was cheating on his mother with Sidneys mother. According to Her Body, Himself, the killer and the final girl always share something similar in their lives, occasionally it is the motive of the killings. In this case the lack of mother figures in both of their lives is what they share. Also this film goes against the final girl theory because there was more than five survivors, including Sidneys father. The typical virgin character was a survivor, and he was a boy. He had the most knowledge of horror films so he added humor to the film, he basically called everything that was going to happen. The other final girl was Gale, she lived so she can tell the story and free an innocent man. The viewers got a glimpse of seeing the cop, Dwight Riley, being pulled into an ambulance. And finally the last final girl was Sidney because she was able to get her strength for being able to kill her mothers kill, even though it was hard for her to kill her lover.

This film captures girl power in the end. Both of them have motives to kill Ghostface for different reasons. Sidney can feel satisfied she killed her mothers killer. Gale is able to prove her point that the killer was still on the loose and take an innocent man off of death row. The unexpected girl power has done good for the end of the story.