Scream franchise

Original Scream

Scream is a 1996 film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. The film revitalized the slasher film genre in the mid 1990s, similar to the impact Halloween (1978) had on late 1970s film, by using a standard concept with a tongue-in-cheek approach that combined straightforward scares with dialogue that satirized slasher film conventions. The film features many teen idols of the time, including: Neve Campbell, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Drew Barrymore, David Arquette and Courteney Cox Arquette.
Scream became a major commercial success upon its release, and was one of the highest grossing films of 1996. It was also highly acclaimed by many critics worldwide, who appreciated the film's tongue-in-cheek approach. It received an 84% "fresh" rating on Rottentomatoes.com As a result it spawned two sequels, Scream 2 and Scream 3. A fourth film was announced by The Weinstein Company in July 2008.

Scream 2

Scream 2 (1997) is a horror thriller film, the second part of the Scream trilogy. As with the other films in the trilogy, Scream 2 combines straight-forward scares with dialogue that satirizes conventions of slasher films, especially (in this case) slasher film sequels

Plot- Sidney (Neve Campbell) and Randy (Jamie Kennedy) are attending Windsor College. They see news reports that a couple (Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps) were murdered in a movie theatre at the preview of the Stab movie, which was based on a book by Gale Weathers(Courteney Cox) about the Woodsboro murders (in other words, the events of the movie Scream). Phil Stevens is stabbed in the head through the wall of a bathroom cubicle. The killer then enters the cinema and sits next to Maureen Evans, and she assumes the killer is simply her boyfriend wearing a mask. During the Casey Becker kill scene in the film Stab, the crowd goes wild. Taking advantage of this, the killer stabs Maureen multiple times. Since many of the movie-goers are wearing the killer's costume (as publicity material provided by the movie studio) and are all carrying fake knives, nobody takes Maureen's attack seriously. Seriously wounded and dying, she climbs up the stairs in front of the movie screen and lets out one final cry before falling down dead. Soon, Sidney and Randy realize that the nightmare is starting all over again.

Scream 3

Scream 3 (2000) is the third installment in the successful Scream series of satirical horror films. It was originally meant to be last installment of the Scream series, but in 2008, Scream 4 was officially announced by Dimension Films.
The film stars Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courteney Cox Arquette, each reprising their roles from the first two films. This is the only part of the Scream trilogy not to be written by Kevin Williamson, as he was busy working on his short-lived television series Wasteland. Ehren Kruger (writer of the film Arlington Road who would later go on to write the screenplays for The Ring, The Ring Two and The Skeleton Key) was given the task of writing the script based on notes Williamson himself had sketched out


Summary

Scream is considered a post modern movie because of its refrences to movies that have come before it, in a spoof style way they have made up thier own rules based on the unlucky outcomes that victims of past horror movies have reciveded thier main set of "rules" include


You wont survive the movie if you have sex.
Dont answer the phone
You wont survive the movie if you drink or do drugs.
Not opening the door
You may not survive the movie if you say "I'll be right back","Hello?" or "Who's there?"
Dont Scream


Other movies scream makes refrences too

Nightmare on elm street
Halloween film series
Night of the living dead
Dementia 13
The thing with 2 heads
Candy man
Prom night
The Howling

Definition of Terms

Pastiche: A media text made up form other media text pieces or of imitations of other styles

Irony:Irony is when humor is based on using words to suggest the opposite of their literal meaning

Intertextuality:
The practice of purposely including a reference of one text in the narrative of another, it can generate levels of meaning for the viewer.

How it links to Scream

All these 3 terms can in some way or another be linked to all three scream movies, firstly pastiche suggests that scream imitates other movies styles from the past which is arguably true because of the amount of slasher/ horror movies they make refrence to. There are aspects of texts such as halloween and nightmare on elm street that they imitate to give audiences a sense of genre identification towards the film such as the iconography they use like knifes, blood and brutal killings.

There is a high level of irony in scream with what they say because when they say certain puns they dont mean what they are saying but say it with comic effect because the adueince know what they realy mean and usually by saying particualr things they are making fun of movies in thier genre from the past. The intertextuality used in scream is blatant because that if the effect wes craven wanted to create with the target audience he selected, as he wanted his audience to be familiarised with the seruois aspects of the slasher film scream allowed him to use intertextuality from other texts and include it in his own films to create greater meaning for audiences so they could relate back to texts from the past and compare it to the imitated narrative that scream used.