The main problem with “Still Screaming” is that though it does cover one of the most popular horror movies of all time, the story of “Scream” and its inception just isn’t very interesting. Sure, Wes Craven happened upon one of the most trendy slasher films ever made and created something of a resurgence in a decade that almost saw the death of the horror genre, but the making of the film and the series of weak sequels is just a series of normal studio anecdotes compiled in to a ninety minute mediocre documentary. There isn’t a lot of magic behind “Scream.” Not like “Return of the Living Dead,” “A Nightmare On Elm Street,” or even “Psycho.” It was a studio fueled film that brought the right talent to the forefront and it succeeded in reviving a sub-genre. It’s barely a tale of independent filmmakers scraping dollars together to make a bang up horror film.
The documentary really tries to stand out from the rest by embracing the meta attitude of the entire film series. Director Turek attempts to direct his own mini-Scream film setting up the documentary by introducing two female characters about to indulge in a horror movie marathon who end up entangled in their own “Scream” scenario, gore and all. The set up as a whole is very weak and the performances from the two actresses is utterly stale and completely misses the mark in capturing the tension of the actual films. The direction meanwhile leaves much to be desired and doesn’t entirely add up to a watchable book end. There isn’t a lot of explanation as to why the documentary is formatted in such a stale manner and the entire set up lacks any enthusiasm or sardonic humor that the original film was so prone in mastering.
“Still Screaming” manages to touch all bases of the original film, even interviewing the original voice of Ghost Face (over a phone!), but the documentary really just plays out in a way there isn’t much insight in to the development or the cogs of the story telling. Most of the interviews are just formula accounts of the making of the film, while stars like Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox really never quite inject their own insight. Their interviews are mostly archived or told through someone else on the film that worked with them. “Still Screaming” never takes advantage of the format and time to spotlight this series of films and really never actually explores the mythos, the influence it had on horror movies, the influence horror movies had on it.
To boot, it never really approaches the societal view it reflects on its audience. Was the film always intended to be meta? How did writer Williamson format the film as a horror film within a horror film? “Scream” was about the fanaticism of horror movies, while the sequels were extensions and there’s never quite the depth we’d like behind any of these films. The whole creative aspect is nothing but a footnote to the more cold production aspect of the trilogy. It’s merely just endless talking heads about the production and nothing more.
“Still Screaming” doesn’t seem to have a lot to say or dig in to the making of the trilogy of Craven fueled films, so it’s all basically truncated in to ninety minutes of endless anecdotes, and in the end there’s not much fodder for the average “Scream” fanatic to chew on besides some amusing tales about props and stunt work. No wonder this is an extra on a Blu-Ray set for the film series. A fairly standard and uneventful horror documentary, “Still Screaming” covers the basics of the productions of the “Scream” trilogy, but never gets down to the nitty gritty of the story or the mythos or the influence the films had as a whole on pop culture and horror cinema altogether. There’s some interesting material to be mined and none if it is found here.