Playback / Scream
Scream · 1996
Want to Play a Game?
An opening that quizzes its victim on horror films while making her the subject of one.
Watch for
- How the film names its own conventions out loud and then obeys them.
- The casting of a star in the opening, and what the film does with that expectation.
- How the telephone converts an ordinary kitchen into the whole location of a thriller.
A worked reading · COCA
CContention
Craven opens by making genre knowledge the subject of the scene, so the audience is tested alongside the character.
OObservation
A girl alone at home is drawn into a phone conversation that becomes a quiz about horror films, the caller's questions escalating into a threat played out in her own house.
CConnotation
Having the victim discuss the rules of horror codes the film as self-aware, while still delivering the sequence straight — the knowingness does not defuse the threat.
AAudience
We are positioned as fellow experts and then punished for it, which resets the audience's confidence for the rest of the film.
Your turn
- What conventions of horror does the scene name? Does it then follow them?
- Why open with a character we have not met and will not see again?
- Does knowing the rules make the scene less frightening, or more?
For teachers
The definitive self-aware genre opening, and worth the twelve minutes if genre is the focus. Sustained terror and an on-screen killing — senior classes only, and flag it clearly.
