DVD Review - Seconds Apart (2011)

Seconds Apart, 2011.

Directed by Antonio Negret.
Starring Orlando Jones, Edmund Entin and Gary Entin.


SYNOPSIS:

Damned from the moments of their births, two brothers possess a gruesome talent for telekinesis - a power they use in the most horrific ways imaginable.


If cinema history has taught us anything, it’s that twins are scary as hell and not to be trusted. Case in point is Seconds Apart, a chiller/thriller from Colombian director Antonio Negret and first-time feature writer George Richards.

The twins in question are played by real life twins Gary and Edmund Entin who are quite simply excellent in their roles. They are genuinely creepy and feel like a cross between Ricky Fitts from American Beauty and the Grady Daughters from The Shining. While their dialogue feels fairly forced and clichéd, the Entin twins do a very good job of making the content fit the bill.

The Entins are supported by a relatively unknown cast including Samantha Droke in the “love interest” role and Morgana Shaw and Louis Herthum as the equally creepy parents of the films main characters. The only real “star” of the film per say is comedian Orlando Jones who plays Detective Lampkin. It feels particularly odd to watch Jones in such a serious role but he actually holds the screen quite well.

However, Lampkin is a major part of the biggest deterrent for the film. There is a horribly contrived sub plot about the detective’s dead wife that has been shoehorned in for no real reason. It’s terribly written, woefully put together and is a huge distraction from the main plot. Not only is it incredibly boring, but it almost ruins the flow of the movie.

When you’re watching a chiller/thriller, you will undoubtedly be waiting for the twist that will either make or break the movie. Luckily for Seconds Apart, the film’s twist falls into the former category. It’s very well written and incredibly creative. However, I would argue that the final moments of the film are not enough to satisfy an audience.

While Seconds Apart does have its moments, it is by no means a great film. The set pieces of the film are very well executed and Negret does create a great feeling of unease, but Richards’ script doesn’t hold enough water to carry it through the 86 minutes. Perhaps diehard fans of the genre will enjoy it for what it is, everyday movie viewers may find the piece to be hokey and ineffectual.

Luke Owen

Movie Review Archive

Talkin' Trilogies - Issue #4 - The "High School Musical" Trilogy

Luke Owen charts the 'High School Musical' trilogy...

No wait! Come back!

Alright, so this may hardly be “one of the greatest trilogies of all time”, however I once again refer to my original post and my rules:

1. It has to be a trilogy

And like it or not, this is a trilogy of films.

Now, don’t think that I am reviewing this series of films to bad mouth them. Quite the contrary in fact, I actually like these films. And with this issue of Talkin’ Trilogies, I hope to show you why.

So, let us take a trip back to 2006 where the Disney Channel was getting ready to premiere a film that, unbeknownst to them, was going to take over the world.

High School Musical (Ortega, 2006)

When unknown writer Peter Barsocchini wrote the screenplay for High School Musical, I’m sure he had no idea what effect it would have on his career. The only thing he had written of note prior to High School Musical was the 1994 Wesley Snipes / Gary Busey movie Drop Zone. “It’s just one of those projects where the planets sort of lined up from day one” he told the L.A Times on August 26th 2007.

Rumour has it that High School Musical actually started life out in 1999 as the proposed sequel/reboot of Grease, tentatively titled Grease 3, which would feature the children of Danny, Sandy and other members of the original cast. The project was shelved after several re-writes in 2004 and according to the IMDB.com trivia page the basic plot remained the same when it was carried over to High School Musical. However, I can find no interviews or articles that confirm or deny these claims, so it’s all hearsay.

“I thought it would be really fun to write a Disney Channel movie that my daughter could watch” he told Written By in 2007. “Because two of the other things I was working on were going to be R rated” he continued, “and High School Musical was a totally different experience”.

The story focuses around two central characters, Captain of the basketball team Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez, the bookish nerd who have a chance meeting on the last night of a holiday break. The pair are thrown up on to a stage and are forced to sing, where they both discover that they can not only both sing very well, they both secretly love it. As luck would have it, Gabriella has now moved to the same school as Troy which would allow their romance to bloom. The pair audition for the duet role in the schools winter musical and get the parts – but now they have to lead double lives as neither of their respective clubs will allow them to do both.

Taking influences from musicals like Grease and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Barsocchini weaved together an entertaining if a little basic script. The characters are very clichéd, the dialogue is stilted and the plot is incredibly standard. It has one simple message, “do what you want to do, not what society deems you to do”, which can be found in many Disney productions. However, despite these negative criticisms, the film was accepted on first draft. “It was the first time in my career, and probably the last time, that a company greenlit the first draft… they said, ‘we really like it and we’re sending it to directors” he told Written By, “and I said, ‘the first draft?!’” The first director they sent the script to was a man named Kenny Ortega, who would go on to take the job.

Ortega had a few soirees in the world of directing, but his real calling card was his work as a choreographer in the 1980s for films such as Dirty Dancing, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As well as bringing Barsocchini’s script to life, Ortega also took on the role of choreographing the dance sequences for the film along with Charles “Chuckie” Kaplow. “Kenny [was a] real stickler for choreographing for the camera” he said at a Q & A session for the Choreography Media Awards in 2009, “There was one day when we we’re working on the basketball number and I had done the choreography for the basketball team, Kenny was in another room with another group. He came in and he saw what we had done and the first thing he said was, ‘where is the camera’”. Ortega could have just shot these dance numbers as flashy music video style segments, however because he cared about the project and wanted to succeed, he really put in the effort so that the film would look like a proper movie rather than a cheap made for TV effort.

Now, you could read that and say that Ortega pushed High School Musical into a film that is all style and no substance – a beautiful shell with an empty core. And at the very base of the film, it is. Despite Ortega’s efforts, the main problems with the script could not be overcome. The dialogue is hokey and the story is clichéd and basic. However where Ortega succeeds in making the film a fun experience - which was the entire point of the film. High School Musical is a fun film. The songs are catchy, the choreography is great and it looks as good as a made for TV movie can look. Having said that, there is one thing that really brings the film to life – its cast.

Ortega made the decision to cast complete of mostly unknowns with the exception of Ashley Tisdale who had some success from the role of Maddie Fitzpatrick in Disney’s The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Either the casting process was incredibly thorough or they got very lucky as they managed to cast an incredibly charismatic bunch of actors. Most notably the afore mentioned Ashley Tisdale who plays drama bitch Sharpay Evans, Corbin Bleu as basketball jock Chad Danforth and the ever charming Zac Efron who took on the lead role.

What is interesting about Efron is that this was the role that catapulted him into the megastar he is today. However, for a film that involves a lot of singing, Efron himself barely sang a note. Because Ortega deemed his voice too low for that of a tenor and his voice was over dubbed by actor and singer Andrew Seeley who also tested for the role of Troy. This leads me to believe that Efron was not cast for his voice but for his looks and his natural charisma. A smart move as Zac Efron was, in my mind, one of the leading contributors to the success of High School Musical. Noted director Gus Van Saant wrote in Interview Magazine in 2008, “Efron radiates a sort of well-scrubbed mannishness. He’s an entertainer in the most traditional sense of the word.”

The made for TV movie premiered on the Disney Channel on January 20th 2006 to a record breaking audience of 7.7 million viewers. Since then, it has been seen globally by 225 million people. A staggering amount for a TV movie that was made for $4.2 million, which is low in the world of Disney TV, to fill a time slot.

The success of High School Musical was instant and its popularity was huge. The DVD shifted 1.2 million copies in the first 6 days and was the second Disney Channel Original Movie to be certified platinum. By August, the soundtrack had sold more than 3 million copies and was number one on the Billboard 200 chart twice. The film spawned a series of books, dolls and a ton of other merchandise as well as a worldwide concert tour, an on stage musical and an ice show.

For me, High School Musical is a mixed bag of affairs. While the songs are incredibly catchy and the film the choreography is top notch, the plot lacks any credibility and a lot of the acting is very wooden. The young cast do have a very natural sense about them, but Vanessa Hudgens in particular falls flat on screen. But this was a made for TV movie and I’m not expecting The Shawshank Redemption here.

With all of this popularity, it would have been foolish for Disney not to commission a sequel. And commission one they did.

High School Musical 2 (Ortega, 2007)

“When [High School Musical] executive producer Bill Borden and I were talking [about the sequel], I said, 'What's the greatest day of the year for a kid? Let's turn the page. Let's not do what's expected. Let's start it on the last day of school.'” Barsocchini told Richard Stayton in the September 2007 issue of Written By. “I had summer jobs” he continued, “not that kids today get summer jobs, you know, because it's harder for them. But I said that would be a fun thing, and Disney was like, 'Okay.'”

So Barsocchini was going the Are You Being Served? route by taking characters out of the comfort zone we’ve grown to know them in and putting them into a foreign environment. This tends to happen with TV to movie adaptations (see the afore mentioned Are You Being Served?, Kevin and Perry Go Large, Sex and the City 2 etc.) and this tactic is usually because the comfort zone has outstayed its welcome. However, this was not the case with High School Musical 2, but as Barsocchini said, “let’s not do what’s expected”. It was a bold move as audiences had built up a perception of what High School Musical as an entity meant. They may have just wanted to see more of the same rather than taking a 180 degree turn. Zac Efron didn’t see it that way however stating in his August 2007 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, “In the first movie, you got to meet the characters of High School Musical. In the second movie you get to join the ride”.

High School Musical 2 takes place at the end of the Wildcats first year together as friends and they are preparing for their summer holiday. The only problem is Troy needs to get some money to be able to pay for his college tuition fees. Meanwhile, Sharpay has plans to steal Troy from Gabriella by giving him a job at the country club that her parents own. What she didn’t count on however was Troy bringing the rest of the Wildcats with him.

Bottom line, High School Musical 2 is a vast improvement on the original film. The production looks better, the acting is better and most importantly for the genre, the songs are better. The overall scale of the film feels less ‘made for TV’ like its predecessor even though this was still made for the television market. Much like with the first film, the basic plot and dialogue is carried by the excellent cast of charismatic youngsters. Corbin Bleu really steps up his game as does the rest of the cast, but its Lucas Brabeel that makes the biggest improvement from the two films by stepping out from the shadows and into the forefront. The true stars of the show once again however are Zac Efron (who actually sings this time) and Ashley Tisdale.

Whilst watching this film through again recently, I made the discovery that without Tisdale’s superb telling of Sharpay’s tale, I probably wouldn’t like this film or indeed the series as much as I do. She gives undoubtedly the best performance in the second movie and steals almost every scene she is in. Her annoying habits and tendencies are highlighted beautifully by Lucas Grabeel’s performance as her brother Ryan who is the perfect counterpart. Tisdale’s beauty and charisma really bring the character from being a clichéd bitch antagonist to easily the best character of the franchise. What makes this a bad thing however is that, as an audience member, I’m not supposed to like her. When she gets her comeuppance at the end of the film, I genuinely feel bad for her which I’m certain was the not the intended point.

Despite my overall praise for High School Musical 2, I do have one reservation against the film which is the case of inconstancy regarding the actual musical side of the film. Edgar Wright said in an interview with DVD Review regarding the fights in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, “When the emotion is too great to convey in mere words, characters in a musical will sing out.” This works in the case of movies like Grease or Little Shop of Horrors where they use the musical number to move the story forward. However in the world of High School Musical, they don’t just sing to move the plot or build characters, they also sing in shows as part of the story. This creates a bizarre world in which Chad Danforth dances around singing with his friends only to then have a conversation with Ryan about how he hates dancing and singing. Which is then followed by a song in the film sung by Chad called ‘I Don’t Dance’ during which he does an elaborate dance number. It doesn’t make sense and is horrendously inconsistent.

With that one complaint aside, High School Musical 2 is again a very fun film. Much like the first film, it was trying not to be a cinematic masterpiece. It set out to be a fun way to spend an hour and a half and it succeeds on every single level. This is encapsulated by the final number of the film, ‘All For One’ sung by the entire cast. There is such an overwhelming sense of fun and enjoyment and the cast (including a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Miley Cyrus) look like they are having a blast. This delight is portrayed so well that you can’t help but smile.

Premiering on August 17th 2007, High School Musical 2 brought in a 17.2 million viewers which was not only a Disney Channel record, it was also the most watched basic-cable television show at the time beating out Monday Night Football’s display of the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys in 2006. Over the premier weekend, the show totalled at a staggering 33.04 million viewers. The success of the sequel, and the franchise, could not be denied.

As I said earlier, I think High School Musical 2 surpasses the first film in every respect however I appear to be in the minority. HSM2 has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score as well as the lowest IMDB.com rating. Phil Null of filmcritic.com said upon the DVDs release in 2008, “[High School Musical 2] lacks the sizzle and originality that made the first film so popular... The songs in this instalment are nowhere near the quality of those in the original, but they work well enough.”

The writing was on the wall, High School Musical was not a one trick pony, it was not a happy accident and more importantly, it was not a fluke. High School Musical was quickly becoming a billion dollar franchise. Imagine what sort of money could be made if the series took to the silver screen...

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Ortega, 2008)

In the history of cinema, the usual course of franchise movies that overstay their welcome on the big screen is for them to move to a straight to DVD release. High School Musical is the exception to the rule however by making the transition from made-for-TV-movie to big screen adaptation with a large scale production and budget.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year is, as the title would suggest, about the graduating year for the Wildcats. With such a huge part of their lives coming to an end, it’s now up to the kids to make the decisions that will take them into adulthood. The main issue of which is whether Troy wants to follow his dream of being a pro basketball player or following his heart and study the performing arts. On top of that, the Wildcats are preparing for their final ever production at East High School simply titled, ‘Senior Year’.

Returning again to pen the script for the third instalment was Peter Barsocchini who said in an interview with movieweb.com, “the first thing when approaching High School Musical 3, knowing it was going to be a theatrical [release] – you literally have a bigger screen to work with. So conceiving musical numbers and the scale of what we did and approaching to do was expanding.” So, the big question surrounding High School Musical 3: Senior Year is whether the transition from small to silver screen was a smooth one. While HSM3 is a good film, it does often feel like an over polished TV movie. However, you cannot fault them on upping the scale of the production.

Where High School Musical 3: Senior Year falls down in my book is the plot points that have just been carried over from the first two films. Troy has to decide whether he wants to act or play ball just like he did in the first film and Gabriella has to decide whether she wants to stay in East High with Troy or “go her own way” as she did in High School Musical 2. Even if this is some people’s first view into the world of High School Musical, Barsocchini should have tried to implement newer plot threads instead of re-hashing old ones. He talked about the scale of production in the afore mentioned interview and that seems to have taken precedent over the actual plot, story and character development. Whereas the first two movies where trying to be something a little bit different from other musicals, High School Musical 3: Senior Year just feels like any other teen musical. Even worse, it just feels like another entry into the franchise and nothing special.

Not to say that High School Musical 3: Senior Year is a bad movie because it’s actually really fun. The songs are still catchy, the mood is high and the choreography is excellent. While I don’t think it’s the best one of the series, it really holds itself up compared to its predecessors. I mentioned the ending of High School Musical 2 with the big end number that highlights the essence of fun the film exudes, well High School Musical 3 also has this big number to cap off the film. This one though is actually quite poignant when you look at the lyrics:

High School Musical
Who says we have to let it go?
It's the best part we've ever known
Step into the future...but hold on to
High School Musical
Let's celebrate where we come from
The friends who've been there all along
Just like... from High School Musical

This can be seen one of two ways. One of those ways being that this song is a wonderful way to celebrate the end of the series. It is a way for the cast members to show their appreciation for the filmmakers taking them from unknowns to major players. Or you could look at it as Disney saying, “We made you and don’t you forget it!” For me, I think this a great way to end the franchise, even if it is a little self-masturbatory. It’s nice to see this cast of characters I’ve grown to love go their own separate ways and out of my life.

This is truly one of the great things about the High School Musical trilogy, which is that the franchise was written and directed by the same people and it features the same cast. It means by the third film they have all gelled together which means they will put out a better product. However, there was one cast member that nearly missed this entry...

On September 6th 2007, nude photos of Vanessa Hudgens were leaked onto the internet and shared throughout the world. Not only was Hudgens’ squeaky clean image tarnished, Disney’s almost impeccable reputation was under threat. On October 17th 2007, OK! Magazine published a story that claimed Disney were done with Hudgens and that they didn’t want her to be in the movie. The article reads, “OK! can exclusively report that Disney has made up its mind about what to do next and that the 18-year-old actress will not be asked to board the boat for the third HSM film. ‘Disney finally decided that they don’t want her back,’ an insider reveals to OK!. ‘They feel that as long as Zac Efron is in the movie, all will be fine.’” However, on the same day, Access Hollywood posted a story which confirmed that Hudgens was still in negotiations with Disney for her role and that they were not going to drop her. Hudgens’ rep said, “totally untrue. It’s an old rumour. OK! Magazine was having a slow news day”. On the 24th October 2008, Hudgens did an interview with The Daily Mirror in which she said, “I think that everything happens for a reason and I wouldn’t take back anything I’ve done. I don’t like talking about it because it was something that was meant to be private and I’d still like to keep it as private as I can.”

Despite the negative press this put on the film, it was always bound to be a success. Premiering on October 24th 2008, High School Musical 3: Senior Year beat out Saw V in box office weekend takings by drawing in $42 million in the US alone and in total has brought in over $250 million dollars. Reviews were mixed with some critics downright hating the film while others enjoyed it. Tim Robey of the Daily Telegraph said that, “[when] refitted for the big screen, it becomes an eerily plastic business, like a blown-up dolls house”. David Jenkins of Time Out said “the bottom line is, if you’ve not already booked tickets for the entire family, think twice before being caught up in the hype. At best, you’ll be disappointed; at worst, you’ll want to blow up a high school.” Mark Kemode said in his review that he heard other critics “audibly tutting” in disapproval. However, Kermode was among many top critics who actually liked the film. He went on to say in his review that, “I’m going to leap to its defence, I really enjoyed it” and to claim that it would be in his top 5 of that year. Mark Olson of the L.A Times said, “The HSM series has always been playful and high-spirited, with a refreshing emphasis on collective action and the importance of group effort over the individual, and there's nothing in High School Musical 3: Senior Year to upset the formula.”

So, with a now billion dollar franchise under the belt, it will come as a surprise to those not in the know is that this is where the High School Musical story ends.

High School Musical 4 and spin-offs

It seems very odd for a company like Disney to just pull the plug on a franchise, especially one that is this hot. In High School Musical 3: Senior Year we were introduced to a whole host of new characters that would in effect be “the next generation” of High School Musical. I’m not sure whether audiences reacted negatively to them or whether they couldn’t get a script right, but these characters were never seen or heard from again. Since the final films release, all talk of a fourth instalment as pretty much died of death and it’s looking more and more likely that we have seen the end of this franchise.

That was until this year when the straight to DVD release of Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure, a spin off movie featuring Ashley Tisdale as Sharpay pursuing a career on Broadway. Now, I’ve not seen this movie so I can’t pass judgment on it, however being that Sharpay was the best thing from all three movies, I would be more than happy to give this a go.

Recently I wrote some reviews for the Roger Corman produced monster movies Sharktopus and Dinoshark. In those reviews, I wrote that the films “could have been a good little tongue in cheek monster movie that would do quite well among B-Movie fans. However, these titles keep getting put in the hands of incompetent filmmakers who don’t know one end of a camera from another, let alone how to make an entertaining film.” This is a key point I bring up when I am jumping to the defence of High School Musical. Ortega and his team weren’t trying to change the world; they were looking to entertain it. Much like Sharktopus and Dinoshark, the High School Musical series was a straight to DVD affair that was just intended to make its money back. However, because the filmmakers cast a group of enthusiastic actors, they brought in a writer who wanted to write a fun script and they had a director with a clue they ended up with a not only an incredibly entertaining film, but a impressively successful one too.

“We need to save our show from people who don't know the difference between a Tony Award and Tony Hawk.” – Sharpay Evans, High School Musical (Ortega, 2006)

Luke Owen

Talkin' Trilogies - Issue #3 - The "American Pie" Trilogy

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Talkin' Trilogies - Issue #2 - The "Jurassic Park" Trilogy

Luke Owen charts the evolution of the Jurassic Park trilogy...

Jurassic Park is a franchise that holds a special place in my heart having almost grown up with it. The first film is held up as one of Spielberg’s best but its sequels however did not fare as well. The second and third instalments were both financial successes but didn’t hold a torch to the brilliance of the original film nor did they receive the same critical success from professionals and fans alike. But with such a good jumping point, how did the sequels miss the mark?

To get to the bottom of all this, we must head back to 1989. Where a novelist turned filmmaker was working on an idea about DNA and dinosaurs...

Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)

During the 70s and 80s, Michael Crichton had a fascination about man taking technology into their own hands with a plan to benefit mankind – only to become destructive when used for all the wrong reasons. Crichton’s penned scripts to this effect included The Andromeda Strain, Coma and the Tom Selleck cult classic Runaway (1984) which he also directed.

Around this time, Crichton was working on a screenplay revolving around a single scientist recreating dinosaurs through their DNA. He sat on the idea for several years until 1989 when he made the decision that a film version of this script would be highly impractical and probably un-filmable. He realised the best way to keep this idea alive was to turn it into a novel – and Jurassic Park was born.

Spielberg came into the picture while the two were working on television series ER and Spielberg questioned him about his future projects. When Crichton brought up Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s interest was piqued. He demanded that he read the book as soon as it was finished.

Despite the bidding war for the movie rights between several studios, the winning bid went to Universal and within a week of the purchase, Spielberg was attached as director. Crichton himself originally penned a draft having been promised by producer Kathleen Kennedy that another writer would be brought in to punch up the dialogue. The writer in question was Hook scribe Marlia Scotch Marmo who turned in a draft that was vastly different to the final product, most notably the removal of Ian Malcolm – whose dialogue was merged with Alan Grant.

Spielberg wasn’t overly keen on the draft turned in and gave the rewrite job to screenwriter David Koepp (who had just finished Death Becomes Her – and would work with Spielberg again on War of the Worlds). Koepp would drastically rework the Marmo script – in fact the only things to remain from her script were the first T-Rex scene and the raptor attack in the kitchen. Koepp reinstated Dr. Malcolm, turned park owner Hammond into a more sympathetic character and, most importantly, made the children into something more than just superfluous characters – which was a problem with not only Marmo’s script, but Crichton’s novel. While the script was written in a mere 10 weeks, the pre-production team spent a whopping 25 months on the biggest element of the film (in more ways than one) – the dinosaurs.

Spielberg had brought on two different teams to work on the dinosaurs that would populate Jurassic Park. Stan Winston and his team worked on the giant animatronic dinosaurs for the onset and close up shots while Phil Tippet worked on the aging Go Motion technology for the far shots – a technique that George Lucas had used on Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back with the Tauntons. Tippet’s Go Motion was to be the staple of Jurassic Park and take up the majority of the effects, but their efforts for the film were to be short lived when Spielberg was unimpressed with what Tippet was turning out. It was a trip to see animators Mark Dippe and Steven Williams to see the animatics of the T-Rex that finally sealed Tippet’s fate. Spielberg told him,”you’re out of a job”, to which Tippet replied, “don’t you mean extinct?” – a line that Spielberg enjoyed so much he had it added to the script. It wasn’t all bad news for Tippet though, because of the extensive work he and his team had done on the dinosaur’s movement, he was kept on to supervise the animatics. His team were retrained to work on the animatics.

With everything finally in place, production of Jurassic Park began on August 24th 1992 and the film was finally completed on May 28th 1993. Spielberg and his team knew they had made something special, however I don’t think they could have guessed just how special it was or what impact it would have on the world.

Not only does Jurassic Park still rank highly on “top 10” and “top 100” lists, it inspired a lot of filmmakers due to the sheer scope of the movie. Ideas that before seemed impossible now appeared to be achievable dreams. It led George Lucas into putting the building blocks together for the Star Wars prequels and Brian Sibley stated in his book Peter Jackson: A Filmmaker's Journey that Jackson was so moved by the picture that he delved back into his childhood love of fantasy – a path that would lead him to make The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong.

Jurassic Park is a masterpiece in filmmaking. Spielberg has such a great knowledge to turn any story, even one as farfetched as Jurassic Park, and make it seem believable. The characters are so beautifully well rounded and have superb character arches (Dr. Grant in particular). John Williams score captivates and tops off the wonderfully constructed set pieces – most notably the fist T-Rex attack and the first full shots of the dinosaurs walking across the plains. Filmmaker Werner Hertzog said that Jurassic Park showed that Spielberg is a “great storyteller and that he knows how to weave special effects into coherent stories.” To show how much of a great storyteller Spielberg is, you only have to look at the giant exposition scene:

The actual “science” behind Jurassic Park is quite complex. Crichton is known for his keen observations on the” hows and whys” of what he is writing and that had to come across on the big screen. This “science” is told through an animated “tour video” that tourists to Jurassic Park would view. This rather well made and entertaining animation gives us the full back story to the science and never once feels boring – despite the script detailing this section for around 4-5 pages. But because this scene never feels boring, we as an audience are more susceptible to actually take in the information being given to us – so have a better understanding of what is happening. A true testament to Spielberg’s extraordinary vision.

Jurassic Park first debuted on June 9th 1993 and would go on to have one of the most successful film releases of the time – beating out Spielberg’s own E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in the takings game with a staggering $81.7 million on its first week alone. Since its release, Jurassic Park has grossed over $914 million dollars worldwide. So it was no surprise that Universal, and Spielberg, wanted a sequel.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)

When Jurassic Park was first released as a novel, Crichton was inundated with requests from fans to write another book. However, Crichton had never written a sequel before and was reluctant to break tradition. But after the release of one of the most successful movies ever made and a personal request from Steven Spielberg himself, Crichton got back behind the typrewriter and began to pen a book that would eventually become The Lost World.

The book was published in September 1995 and the film adaptation began production exactly one year later.

The film takes place several years after the events of the first film. Dr. Malcolm is called in for a meeting with Hammond about a mission to Site B – a place where the dinosaurs were bred before being moved to the main park. This means that there are now no fences to keep them contained. Although Malcolm at first says no, the revelation that is girlfriend Sarah is already on Site B on her own convinces him to head over and rescue her. Among all this, is a backdrop of Hammond’s nephew Ludlow taking control of InGen so that he can build a new Jurassic Park in San Diego. So now there are two teams on Site B, one team monitoring and observing the creatures and one team to capture and transport them Essentially making this the peace loving good guys against the pig-headed corporation bad guys – which is really at the core of my biggest gripe against The Lost World.

The Good hippies vs. Bad corporate idiots is handled quite poorly by Spielberg and all the characters are quite badly written. Gone are the brilliant conventions of “man playing God” that Jurassic Park had in doses; The Lost World is more concerned about protecting the elements that the one man playing God created. Despite bringing back the highly underutilised Ian Malcolm from the first film to the forefront of the stage, he doesn’t feel like the same Dr. Malcolm that we loved in Jurassic Park. This isn’t helped by a poor supporting cast and boring dialogue clichés.

What I will say though is that the action sequences are where The Lost World really shines. One of the things that David Koepp did was to import elements from the first novel into the new script that he had left out of the first film. These included the opening sequence with the little girl being attacked by the Compys, the waterfall T-Rex sequence and Dieter’s death – which was originally Hammond in the original novel. Dieter’s death in particular is quite a gruelling scene and certainly one of the highlights. The true highlight for me however is the frantic run across the Raptor’s nest through the long grass – a scene that alone makes the film worth watching.

The biggest action sequence comes in the real final act of the film where the transported T-Rex escapes capture and runs amok through San Diego – a scene that Spielberg added in once production had started instead of the proposed longer ‘long grass Raptor attack’ ending the script called for. While I always felt this was a rather weak ending to the film, Mark Bernadin of Entertainment Weekly wrote in 2008 that this scene solidified the T-Rex as a true giant monster stating, “Unless your giant monster is causing massive property damage, can you really call it a giant monster?” While I sort of agree with the statement, Spielberg didn’t need to bring the Rex into a human environment to solidify him as a true threat or “giant monster”. He had done a good enough job of the in the first film. On a side note, Ian Freer theorises in The Complete Spielberg that he made the decision for this ending to one up the upcoming American reboot of Godzilla. Besides, I always felt the true magic of the Jurassic Park series was seeing how a small band of humans reacted in an environment they had no control over – not the other way round.

Overall, The Lost World just didn’t capture the imagination of Jurassic Park. It goes against the grain the first one had set up and became a run of the mill by the numbers action affair. The characters aren’t as engaging, the plot wasn’t as intriguing and the overall presentation feels bland, lifeless and dull. Commercially though, The Lost World: Jurassic Park was a success – breaking many box office records. However, critically, it didn’t fare so well. Almar Haflidason of the BBC said that, “some nice set pieces, although they offer nothing new and feel very much like leftovers [from the first film]”, a sentiment agreed with by Roger Ebert who wrote in 2000, “Where is the awe? Where is the sense that if dinosaurs really walked the earth, a film about them would be more than a monster movie? Where are the ooohs and ahhhs?”

But you can’t argue with the films commercial success – taking a mind blowing $92.6 million on its 4 day memorial weekend opening. And with money takings that good, Universal would have been silly to just let another opportunity slide.

Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)

Upon completion of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg said that he was “done” with the franchise from a directing standpoint. Luckily for him, relatively new director Joe Johnston had shown an interest in directing the second instalment and was promised by Spielberg that if a third film should come to fruition, then he would get to take the helm.

However, unlike the first two films, this would be a completely fresh idea that didn’t have a source material to base the script upon. When Johnston first signed on in 1999, the script was being based off a story by Steven Spielberg that feature the return of Alan Grant, who had taken up a new home up a tree on one of the islands to monitor the dinosaurs behaviour.

This story was quickly changed when a new writing team was brought on including future Che screenwriter Peter Buchman and the team of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor who had just finished writing and directing the excellent Election. This new story featured Alan Grant and a team of scientists and military personnel who are monitoring Pteranodon that have escaped from Site B. This story and script went as far as costumes, props and set design before Johnston closed the script down five weeks before production was to start. Instead, he wanted to develop a “rescue mission” idea that he had been given by original screenwriter David Koepp. It was this idea that would become the film we know today. However, with only 35 days before Jurassic Park III went into production, Buchman, Payne and Taylor didn’t have enough time to finish a script - so Jurassic Park III began filming on August 30th 2000 with an unfinished screenplay.

Set several years after the events of The Lost World, Jurassic Park III tells the story of parents Paul and Amanda Kirby whose son Erik has went missing while sight-seeing over Site B. Desperate to rescue him, they trick Dr. Grant into thinking that they are themselves tourists who want to see the wondrous Site B with the promise that they will fund his next dig. Before they know it, Dr. Grant, his partner Billy and the parents are now stuck in the middle of Site B with no sign of escape.

With regards to the aforementioned unfinished script, I believe this is where the main problem with Jurassic Park III lies. The film feels incredibly unfinished, the plot is weak and the characters – including Grant – are under developed. Despite the boring plot and script, they pale in comparison to the horrendous ending. In subsequent interviews and articles, Johnston has claimed that the ending to Jurassic Park III was going to be much more elaborate and action packed, but because Universal cut the budget back to save money, he was forced to shoot the lame cop out ending that we all know. However, I would argue that beginning the production with an unfinished script was the real reason that the film just ends with no build or crescendo.

The other big thing to mention (in more ways than one) is the introduction of the Spinosaurus. Completely ignoring all the hard work that Spielberg and the marketing campaigns Universal had done to build up the T-Rex as the most vicious of the all the dinosaurs on either island, Johnston made the decision to introduce a new predator to replace him. It boggles the mind that he could make such a decision that not only undoes all of said hard work, but it completely undermines it too. Because of this choice, I never engaged as much emotion into the film because I didn’t buy into the Spinosaurus as much as I did the T-Rex.

It also goes to show how little investment Johnston had in building Jurassic Park III as a continuation of the first two films. Site B in Jurassic Park III doesn’t resemble the same place Dr. Malcolm and his team escaped from in The Lost World, Dr. Grant doesn’t feel like the same character that first entered our world in 1993 and neither does the cameoing Ellie Sadler. It comes off as more of a stand alone movie or a reboot that an ending to a trilogy. Which I actually believe was Johnston’s intentions, but if that were the case I don’t know why he decided to include Grant, Sadler and other elements of the Jurassic Park cannon.

But much like The Lost World, its success cannot be argued having grossed over $368 million worldwide - while not a patch on the success of the first film, it’s still an impressive number. With a number that large it’s a wonder why Universal never tried to capitalise on the franchise's popularity with a fourth instalment.

Jurassic Park IV and beyond

Ever since the release of Jurassic Park III, Johnston and Spielberg have talked very publicly about the possibility of a fourth entry in the Jurassic Park franchise. In 2002, future The Departed screenwriter William Monahan was brought in to write up a first draft that was completed in 2003 and slated for a 2005 release. The Howling writer John Sayles was then brought into work on re-writes which ended up going nowhere. Despite various actors including Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and even Richard Attenborough all stating that they’ve either been contacted for or confirmed they will be in the film in some shape or form, nothing as ever come to fruition. However, in more recent interviews, Johnston has stated that once he has finished with Captain America: The First Avenger, he will be returning to the franchise to start a new trilogy that is, “nothing like anything you have seen before”. Which suggests to me that he will carry on down the route he took with Jurassic Park III by ignoring a lot of the already set standards of the series in order to create new adventures.

But, like any trilogy, do we really need a fourth entry? Kathleen Kennedy, producer of all three films, stated in best when she said on comingsoon.net, “You know, when Michael Crichton passed away, I sorta felt maybe that's it. Maybe that's a sign that we don't mess with it." One of the problems that Jurassic Park III had was that it didn’t have that guidance from Crichton’s work. I know that The Lost World was very loosely based off the novel, but the main plot and certain sections of the film came from Crichton’s work. David Koepp needed that backbone structure to get a strong plot in place – something that the Jurassic Park III writing team didn’t have.

But back to the original trilogy. I rate Jurassic Park very highly as one Spielberg’s best films. I would almost go as far as to say it is his best work – but it’s hard to make that point when the man has made Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jaws etc. It is one of my earliest cinema memories and it very rarely left my VHS player when it was released for the home audience. However, both The Lost World and Jurassic Park III never captured the same magic of the first film. They both have their moments (the former rather than the latter), but they don’t hold a candle to the genius and magic of the first instalment.

"I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!" - Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park (1993)

Luke Owen

Examining the trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Luke Owen on the first trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes...

Anyone who knows me or has spoken to me about films in general will know that I have a rather deep-seated hatred for remakes / reboots / prequels to old movies / rehashes etc.

Just today I have read news about remakes of John Carpenter’s cult classic They Live (directed by Matt Reeves of American remake Let Me In fame) as well as Bruce Campbell announcing The Evil Dead remake script is complete and ready for production. A clear indication of Hollywood executive’s just throwing darts at their DVD racks to choose which film they make next.

Which brings me to today’s release of the trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes – another reboot to a series that a lot of people have forgotten about or have never seen. Now, I like the Planet of the Apes movies. While the sequels didn’t hold a candle to the brilliance of the first movie, they were fun B movies that at least entertained. Except for Beneath the Planet of the Apes – that movie is no good at all.

When the announcement was made about a possible Apes reboot, I reacted with abject apathy. Not only was I tired of getting angry about the laziness of Hollywood, we’ve already had a terrible “re-imagining” from Tim Burton 10 years ago that failed to capture the genius of Rod Serling’s script. So, I let the film slip under my radar.

However, when I discovered that it was going to be an origin story that went back to the apes' original rise, I have to admit my interest was piqued. Much like Rob Zombie’s Halloween detailed Michael’s childhood, I don’t believe it this is a story that needs to be told (plus, it spoils the ending of the first film for audiences – even though the DVD artwork did that for them). But, I was at least intrigued by the notion of seeing how man destroys itself.

You see, I love horror and sci-fi films where man tries to play God or devise technology that can help only to find it hinders. From David Cronenberg’s brilliance of The Fly to Steven Spielberg’s family fun classic Jurassic Park, man playing God is an interesting concept that never fails to entertain me.

But, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. Until I saw the trailer.

We open with James Franco giving a presentation about a drug he has created that can repair brain tissue. Through experiments on monkeys, they quickly discover that it not only helped their brain matter, it improved it. What follows are awesome shots of the apes escaping and essentially “rising”. And then it ends. Leaving you wanting more...



While I feel they’d have been better served not showing a lot of the apes taking over to heighten ambiguity (see J.J. Abrams' Super 8 – the less you see, the scarier it is), the trailer did a great job of getting me pumped about the movie.

If there was one other thing I would criticise about the trailer (and perhaps the movie in general) is that the CGI apes didn’t always look impressive. I’m not suggesting that they should have stuck with actors in suits, but the “team behind Avatar” don’t look like they’ve got their facial reactions and movements quite right. However, I am only judging this on less than 20 seconds worth of footage – so I could be incredibly wrong.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes looks like it could be a really fun movie. James Franco looks very impressive from the short clips as a tortured genius whose one brilliant discovery brings about the end of mankind and the action sequences look genuinely entertaining. Plus, the notion of a breed of super smart apes rising above the humans that created them is a very captivating premise.

I am not suggesting that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is going to change the way I view reboots / remakes, but the trailer seems to be a step in the right direction.

Along with Franco, Rise of the Planet of the Apes also stars Andy Serkis (King Kong) Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), John Lithgow (Terms of Endearment), Tom Felton (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Brian Cox (X-Men 2) and David Hewlett (Stargate Atlantis). The film, which is directed by Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist), is scheduled to open in the U.S. on August 5th, with a UK release date yet to be announced.

“You are right, I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself.” – Dr. Zaius (Planet of the Apes, 1968)

Luke Owen

Talking Trilogies – Issue #1 – The “Scream” Trilogy

With a fourth installment about to hit cinemas, Luke Owen dissects Wes Craven's 'Scream' trilogy...

This coming Friday sees the release of the newest instalment of the Scream franchise, a good 15 years since the first one. Which means, as residents of Great Britain, we only have 4 more days to refer to Scream as a trilogy rather than a quadrilogy. And if Dimension gets their own way, we’ll be heading for another 2 sequels, turning the series into a saga.

But enough talk of future instalments (for now at least), let’s go back to the beginning, where a young man named Kevin Williamson was writing a script inspired by movies he grew up watching.

Scream (Craven, 1996)

The 90s were dark times for the slasher genre. The big dogs of the 1980s had seen better days and had all come to a close or were, ironically, dying of death. Halloween was spewing out poorly received sequels and Freddy and Jason had hung up their respective claws and masks in the wait for a film that wouldn’t see the light of day until the turn of the new millennium. Much like the tortured teenagers that populated the movies, the genre was dying and in need of reviving.

The revival it needed came in the unlikely form of a film that, for all intents and purposes, was spoofing the very thing it was portraying. In 1995, Kevin Williamson had penned an 18 page treatment called Scary Movie along with 2 five page treatments for potential sequels - the plan being that he could sell them as a package so a production company could franchise the property. The script grew and grew throughout this time and was eventually sold to the Weinsteins and Miramax who gave it to their sister company Dimension Films. Wes Craven jumped on board shortly after his Haunting remake fell through and the script was renamed Scream. Production began in April of 1996 and ended in June of the same year. The film was edited quickly and released just before Christmas to much applause from fans and critics alike. The slasher genre was back and it had a new face – a Ghostface.

What makes Scream an interesting film is that it became the first successful post-modern slasher movie. It blurred the lines between film world and real world – something that was quite popular among films in the early and mid 90s. The post-modern aspect of Scream was not something that was not new to director Wes Craven - he had tried something similar with Freddy Kruger in 1994s Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Unfortunately, the idea behind New Nightmare was never really conceived to its full potential which hurt the film. Scream on the other hand, got it just right. Its post-modern with enough seriousness about it, but still has its tongue placed firmly in its cheek.

And that’s what makes Scream such an excellent film - it balances horror and comedy and it never feels like its juggling too many balls at one time. Despite the fact that Scream is a spoof of the genre, Craven’s excellent direction keeps its audience on edge like a true horror film should. I believe that without Craven at the helm, the film may not have been so widely received. Because Craven is spoofing a genre he has extensive knowledge in (and at times spoofing his own work), he understood the balance between being poop your pants scary and wet your pants funny.

The best example of this is the film’s opening 12 minutes. We watch Casey (played by Drew Barrymore – who requested the role despite being offered the lead Sidney Prescott) as she awaits her boyfriend to arrive so they can snuggle up with some popcorn and a scary movie. Her evening is interrupted however when she receives strange calls from a man who wants to play a game with her - asking her questions about horror movies (in particular, slasher movies of the 80s such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween). As the unattended popcorn starts to get out of control, so does the scene as the strange caller’s game takes a deadly turn. Casey now must answer the phonecallers questions correctly or her boyfriend (played by Kevin Patrick Walls, who nearly got the role of Billy - which is highly ironic when you consider the ending) will be killed. When the game is turned on Casey, and she becomes the prey, we as an audience are treated to a marvellously made ‘stalk-and-slash’ sequence that is a masterpiece in horror filmmaking.

The brilliance of this opening sequence doesn’t just lie with Craven’s genius. Kevin Williamson’s script peaks and troughs with beautiful nuances that really build the scene to a fantastic climax. This is capped off with the brilliance of casting Drew Barrymore, who was a big star at the time, in the “Janet Leigh” role – as well as killing her off in the first reel just as Hitchcock had done 40 years prior at the Bates Motel in Psycho. The dialogue between Casey and the killer is almost realistic and could have occurred between horror fans outside of the cinema. The general consensus among horror fans is that A Nightmare on Elm Street is a great movie with terrible sequels and I’m sure that in the heat of the moment, some horror fans have a slip of the tongue and claim that Jason was the killer in Friday the 13th rather than his screw-loose mother Pamela. All of this culminates into an excellent and dizzying opening scene that really sets the tone for the rest of the film – and it never slows down from there.

I could go on all day about how great I think this film is. All of the characters are well rounded, the performances are great for the genre’s standards and the tongue in cheek comedy never lets up or gets old. It really is a wonderful film and thoroughly deserves its place as one of the best of its kind.

Scream opened up in cinemas in America 5 days before Christmas of 1996 and has earned Dimension films over 170 million dollars worldwide. It has garnered a high class reputation and continues to be one of the best of its breed.

With the huge mainstream success of Scream, it would have been foolish to capitalise on it. After all, Kevin Williamson had already started plans for a sequel and Dimension were not fools. They decided to go down the same route that a lot production companies in the 80s travelled. The survivors of Scream were about to head for a sequel – and with a sequel, comes new rules...

Scream 2 (Craven, 1997)

Scream 2 opened in America less than one year later on 12th December 1997. With a slightly larger budget, Scream 2 did significantly better than its predecessor and has taken in just over 173 million dollars worldwide. But critically, it didn’t fare as well.

The main problem with Scream 2 is that it feels rushed. This could be down to the Kevin Williamson writing the script too quickly and not giving it time to mature. Large portions of the script, particularly in the killing sections which just read “Wes Craven will make it scary” (this is something I will come back to later). One of the other reasons perhaps could be that Craven had been pressurised by the studio to knock the film out quickly as possible to capitalise on the first films success. Whatever the reason, Scream 2 at times feels like a cheap knock off of its far superior predecessor.

That’s not to say it’s a bad movie. Set two years after the events of the original film, the town of Woodsboro is still reeling after the attacks from Ghostface. However, Sidney and Randy are moving on with their lives as they attend college – trying their best to ignore the fact that Stab, the ‘movie within a movie’ adaptation of the killings of the first movie, has been released. On top of that, there appears to be a copycat killer of Ghostface on the loose – and he’s after Sidney.

While I do concede that Scream 2 is inferior to the first instalment, it does have some very nice touches to it. The set pieces are very well orchestrated, the script (despite being written quickly) is strong and the overall experience still has that balance of horror, comedy and self parody.

As afore mentioned, Scream 2 feels rushed and I theorised that this could be down to the quickly written script. Kevin Williamson had written several drafts of Scream 2 – each one having a different killer reveal. Part of the success of Scream came from the “whodunit” aspect – which meant that secrecy was key to the success of the sequel. However, one of these drafts leaked onto the Internet and Williamson was forced into a hasty rewrite phase – meaning the film went into production with an unfinished script. In my opinion, this could have attributed to one of the weaker aspects of the film – its ending.

The ending of Scream 2 is what really lets the film down. Rather than the well played out twist that came from the original, Scream 2 took a different approach by having the killer as a character we’ve never been introduced to before. The ending doesn’t feel as gripping, engaging or as well written as the first instalment. It’s such as shame because if the film had a better ending, it really could have raised the bar on the films standards.

Scream 2 may not have been well received by critics or fans - but its success could not be denied. Scream had now become a major player in not only the horror world, but also the film world in general. Just as Freddy had done 10 years previous, Ghostface had gone mainstream. However, it would be 3 years before we saw another sequel – and this time with a different writer at the helm...

Scream 3 (Craven, 2000)

In 1999, the Weinsteins approached Kevin Williamson about writing Scream 3. Unfortunately, despite being tied into a three movie contract with Miramax, Williamson was involved in developing some other projects and could not sign on to write a first draft. However, he did pen an outline which was passed into Ehren Kruger. Kruger admitted later that because he didn’t write the film from the start of the series, he found it hard to engage with writing the characters. This could be the attributing reason why Scream 3 is the weakest entry of the series.

This time with a much bigger budget ($40 million), Scream 3 opened February 4th 2000 and despite having a good opening weekend, didn’t manage to surpass Scream 2’s takings and was panned by both critics and fans alike.

The film takes place several years after Scream 2. The ‘movie-within-a-movie’ series Stab is entering into its third instalment and through a convoluted series of events, Sidney, Dewey and Gale find themselves on the set of the movie to stop another copycat Ghostface killer. Turns out this killer is knocking off the cast members of Stab 3 in the order they are killed in the script – but has Sidney as his main target.

One of the funniest things about Scream 3 is that all the “cast members” of Stab 3 sit around talking and complaining about how this entry isn’t as good as the other two. It’s highly ironic and certainly not intended. I get that they were trying to be funny, but they really weren’t doing themselves any favours. In comparison, the cast of Scream 2 all sat around talking about how some sequels are better than the original. While in that case they were wrong, at least they didn’t set themselves up for ironic backlash.

On top of that, the poorly written and conceived script hampers the film to a point where it can’t be saved. Where the first two films managed to pull off the balance of comedy and horror, Kruger’s script doesn’t quite get the grasp of it. In another stroke of irony, Scream 3 almost feels like the sort of slasher movie Scream was spoofing in the first place. With horrible, awful clichéd set pieces, badly written, unrounded characters and a boring presentation, Scream 3 feels like an unbalanced and badly made mess.

I mentioned in my Scream 2 review that the ending really let the film down. Scream 3 also suffers from the same affliction, but because the film is just bad all the way through, its poor ending is just the icing on the cake. Worse than just introducing a character we’ve never met before, they use an already established character but tack on a badly written backstory to justify the choice. Its a million miles away from the brilliance of Scream’s ending.

Scream 3 was a bad ending to an otherwise good trilogy. But the real question surrounding the series now is whether or not Scream 4 will right the its wrongs. Is Scream in need of another attempt? Or should it have been left to die like the victims of the films?

Well, initial reports have not been good. Kevin Williamson, who was brought back on to pen the script, left the production before it ended – meaning the writing reigns were once again handed to Ehren Kruger. However, Wes Craven stated in an interview that, “There was a bumpy period when things shifted over from Kevin to Ehren. I signed up to do a script by Kevin and unfortunately that didn't go all the way through the shooting. But it certainly is Kevin's script and concept and characters and themes" - which does inspire me with confidence. While Wes Craven will be given a lot of credit for making the films horror gems, the real genius of the first two films was Kevin Williamson’s scripts. They did such a good job of being funny spoofs of a genre we all loved while still being entertaining and frightening horror films that they deserve to be recognised as such.

“Do you like scary movies?” – Ghostface, Scream (1996)

Luke Owen