Editorials
The Enduring Legacy of ‘Scream’: 25 Years of Meta-Horror Mastery
Stating the obvious here, but Scream has some serious endurance.
Over its 25-year history, the series has seen steady growth in its fanbase. With its highs and lows, along with multi-year lulls between films, this perennial series remains one that fans, myself included, can be proud to say is their own.
This begs the question, what makes Scream so unique as to outlast so many others? The original film is lightning in a bottle, an inimitable movie that reignited the costume killer craze. Many have tried and failed to emulate the charm of the films, mostly due to the complexity of their charm.
Scream is a Recipe for Success
Many horror movies have a strong iconography: well-designed slashers, inspiring final girls, earworm soundtracks, and memorable kills. Scream, of course, has all this but excels because of the horror history in its framework. That history is the filmography of industry veteran Wes Craven.
All four films carry the innovative spark Craven is renowned for while retaining the spirit of his previous works. The cruelty and aggression from the various Ghostface killers harken back to his work in 1976’s The Last House on the Left, where he first shocked audiences with the depravity of the Stillos. The dark humor of Scream takes the bleak laughs the best of the Nightmare on Elm Street films could produce and elicits them through Kevin Williamson’s famously clever dialogue.
And what is a conversation on Scream without addressing the meta-commentary on horror film history? Something audiences were first treated to heavily in Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream was a film that was decades in the making, as its creation finds many roots in its predecessors. It’s fitting that a series inspired by so many others would end up influencing a score of horror films to come.
Heartfelt Love Letter to Slashers
As often as people brand Scream as satirizing the slasher genre, the movies feel like the most heartfelt love letter to slasher films because those films are its parentage. It knows where it comes from, looks back with pride, and paves a path rife with improvements.
On a technical and narrative level, all the Scream films are incredibly well constructed because of this. (Yes, even Scream 3. I would argue ESPECIALLY Scream 3 at some points, but that is a conversation for another day.) The cast of each of the films include some of the most charismatic and enjoyable actors to grace the silver screen. They’re fleshed out and three-dimensional, driving empathy in a subgenre where it feels increasingly easy to forget even main cast members in favor of the grisly spectacle of the villains. And in terms of villains, this series has the best chase scenes in all of horror and some of the best showdowns between killer and victim, due to how frenetic and high energy they can get.
But you, dear horror fan, already know all this, I’m sure. So, what is the secret ingredient then, if not all the above? What are its biggest improvements?
The Folklore in Scream
In other films, we get only a few lines about a killer’s legacy, a scene if we’re lucky, with a survivor or a victim. The gravity of a Voorhees massacre or a Krueger dream slaughter is largely relegated to the main cast and their interactions with the killer. But in Scream, we get to see the folklore of Sidney’s story spread. We’re presented with the relationship between the events of the films and the world around them to learn how the legend of Ghostface is transmitted. The Scream movies are a rarity that treats the town of Woodsboro, and eventually the world at large, as a character that grows with the rest of the cast.
This became most clear to me when I first heard Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” play in the films, a song I’ll forever associate with the movies. Despite how short the scene is, watching Woodsboro shut down for curfew in broad daylight was the scene that really got to me the first time I saw the movies. It was then that I recognized how rarely we get to see the outermost ripples of the shockwave created by a slasher’s rampage.
The Cultural Impact of Stab
And those shockwaves reverberate even further as the films go on. Woodsboro’s fear in the time between the first and second movies morphs into a morbid fascination that eventually spawns a series within a series, Stab. By Scream 4, there are seven Stab films with a fervent following; the teens of Woodsboro have parties to marathon the films, shouting lines back at the screen like it’s Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s especially fun to see characters behaving as I would with Scream, reciting its many quotable lines. I see myself in Scream 2’s rambunctious theater, worked up to a fever pitch for the next installment in their beloved franchise.
Every time this element resurfaced, I was reminded of the special nature of how the Scream movies interact with their audience. There’s a sense of endearing realism in the reactiveness of the Scream world, with Stab paralleling our world’s reactiveness to Scream. Ghostface is mythologized, not as Billy and Stu or Mrs. Loomis and Mickey, but as a cultural sensation, a legend that has spawned an indelible influence on the collective consciousness. The series doesn’t just become a meta-commentary on horror films, it becomes a story on the power of Scream’s story; the power that lies in change. The very same power it had over me when I first saw it.
Each of the Scream films gives us a sensation of growth; growth that parallels that of its audience. It’s one of the franchises that hasn’t gotten lost in its own hype or swamped down in trying to relive its glory days. The series is just as forward-thinking and in touch with its audience as it was back in 1996, making it highly rewatchable. It still has a strong fanbase because it looks to the future of horror and shows us the greatness of change.
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
