Slasher movies are an odd-duck genre when you get down to it. No matter how you try to mix things up in their formula, the fact is that you’re gonna have a group of people on the run from a killer that is either completely inhuman or completely insane. How do you mix up that formula?
By having your killer play those formulas up to the hilt.
Ghostface — Scream
Scream was the brainchild of acclaimed director Wes Craven, who created the movie as a chance to end what was at the time a stale leftover genre of the 1970s and 80s. By the time of the movie’s release in 1996 the slasher movie had become formulaic and overdone; teens do stupid thing, killer kills teens, virginal survivors kill killer. Some movies had managed to mix up this plan slightly, like Candyman or The People Under the Stairs (the latter also directed by Craven and both with a heavy political undercurrent), but by Scream people had associated the genre with masked unstoppable killers slicing and dicing sexually over-wrought teenagers. It was a genre Craven had helped to create, and with Scream he had hoped to destroy.
Ghostface became the symbol of this new type of killer in slasher movies. The killer isn’t a superhuman monster like Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger. He also isn’t an emotional blank like Michael Myers. Ghostface is almost a personable slasher, toying with victims like a cat with a mouse as they make the kill. The establishing moment for Ghostface arrives in the very first movie, where he taunts his first victim about horror trivia over the phone. The audience’s tension slowly builds, though at the time of release no one expected star Drew Barrymore to be the first of the victims due to the nature of slasher movies at the time. He even lampshades the fact that sometimes movies and real life do intersect when Barrymore’s character threatens to call the cops, stating;
- “They never make it in time.”
More interesting to the Ghostface killer is that they’re human in weaknesses. It isn’t uncommon to see Ghostface tripped, kicked, shot, stabbed, and otherwise hindered in their chases, as it turns out such a costume isn’t so practical against real people who can often fight back. The killer’s victims have often escaped thanks to sheer coincidence, running into friends or even strangers who would interrupt the killer’s attempts to kill their victims.
The key to Ghostface’s terror, at least in the first movie, was that they weren’t playing by the rules other slasher villains had before. They didn’t hunt teenagers isolated is the woods or within their own dreams. They struck in a a “safe” residential community, with a relatively competent police force (Despite what the atrocious “Movie” movies made it out to be) and where there are the typical struggles of everyday life. Worse, Ghostface constantly points out to his victims that they need to remember the “rules” of the movies they have watched. That the police never make it in time, that they should never ask “Who’s there”, and worst of all, that the killer is always in control.
This new take on the slasher villain led to the success of Scream, but as in all things when Hollywood smells money they want to keep the green rolling in. Ghostface reappeared four times, in the three sequels and once if you count the separate seasons of the Scream TV series as a whole. Though it’s difficult to go truly in-depth on Ghostface without spoiling the entire series, for the original film Ghostface was truly a terror because of the motivation. While at first seemingly having no motivation at all for the killings, when the truth is revealed the motives become both all too human and utterly inhumane, a trend that at least does follow the killer through the sequels and series.
Wes Craven failed to finish off the slasher genre, but in a way his attempt to murder it gave it a strange rebirth. Horror movies could finally have killers that were on the same level as their victims, not supernatural horrors like Freddy or genius-level madmen like Hannibal Lector. They could be people in cheap costumes with a hunting knife, carving their way through a community, and most frighteningly of all, inspire others to take up the mantle and continue their bloody mosaic.
Reality: While the methods of Scream are more Hollywood, the real terrors that we are forced to face now come from people desperate to be bigger than they are. With the rise of mass media forced at us 24/7, people with nothing see chances everywhere of being the next big star in their own warped worlds. We put out dozens of experts after a mass shooting, analyzing the killer with a fine-toothed comb trying to puzzle out their motivations and goals, and all the while we never think that somewhere, some poor and fractured mind is watching this attention being lavished on another “nobody” like them. Which plants a small seed in some minds. A little dangerous thought that no one can stop. A thought whispering to them that will only grow if left unchecked.
That can be me.
Again, I’d like to start taking requests on villains you all would like to see in this series. Comment below with your ideas, and I’ll do the research to see who should be discussed next.