SCREAM
Scream perfectly walks the line between a horror movie and a comedy, as it includes cameos and callbacks to several famous horror movies.
I mean, what’s better than a character playing with a menacing kitchen knife while talking about Michael Myers, or having a janitor named Fred wear a red and green sweater with a fedora?
Despite these self-aware and comedic elements, Scream also threw audiences for several loops. Like when Drew Barrymore, who was thought to be the main character, died in the first 12 minutes.
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The film also renewed viewer’s fears of the ordinary and everyday, just as the great slasher films of the past had. Where Halloween had people refusing to babysit and Friday the 13th left kids wanting to stay home from summer camp, Scream made people jump when the phone rang.
It also reignited the fear of never being safe, even when you’re surrounded by people- which helped them to manipulate the theme of isolation in a unique way.
Setting of the Film
Out of all the places where isolation has occurred, Scream’s setting is the most interesting. Unlike Alien and Frankenstein, this film’s main character is not physically isolated from her peers and fellow human beings. She’s not galavanting through the Swiss Alps, or hurtling through space. She’s not even alone in the woods in some cabin. Instead, the film is set in the small and fictional town of Woodsboro, California, with a majority of the action taking place in people’s houses. As a result, the main character, Sidney Prescott, is very rarely alone due to her either being at a friend’s house or at school.
Sidney and the Setting
Despite the public setting of the film, Sidney is still made to feel completely alone. After having discovered her murdered mother nearly a year prior to the current events of the film, Sidney struggles with the loss. This event leaves Sidney feeling emotionally isolated, partly due to her having lost her mother but also because those closest to her don’t understand what she’s going through. The murder of her classmate and her friends callous reactions make Sidney's emotional isolation obvious, as she appears to still be struggling with her mother’s death. Sidney is made to feel even more isolated after being attacked by the killer in her home, as her boyfriend crawls through her window moments after the killer disappears.
Sidney and Ghostface
Sidney’s interactions with the killer Ghostface, or killer(s), is similar to the other interactions we’ve looked at, as Ghostface directly targets Sidney, just as Dracula and the Creature had. Sidney also seems to consistently encounter Ghostface after isolating or being isolated from a social situation or environment.
Sidney's Relationship with Isolation
Sidney’s relationship with isolation stems entirely from her mother being murdered. Discovering her mother’s mutilated corpse leaves Sidney experiencing a level of grief that none of her friends or peers, or even her father, can understand. This results in Sidney feeling emotionally isolated, as well as socially isolated as she feels no one understands what she’s dealing with. Her social isolation only grows after the murder of her classmate, as her friends insensitive humor reminds her that they don’t feel the same as her. Sidney’s increasing emotional and social isolation leads to her physically isolating herself, such as hiding in the bathroom after overhearing gossip about herself.
While Sidney Prescott is exposed to the most isolation, she is not the only character that experiences it. She is also not the only character who is exposed to isolation that does not die.
Seven characters die on screen; five of whom were victims. These five characters, though alone, were not completely isolated when they died.
Similar to how Sidney was attacked in the bathroom at her school, these characters were attacked while separated from others but were still in a fairly populated area. Like how one of them was murdered in the garage. The house was full of people, but this character was alone with the killer in the garage.
While some of these characters died alone, and were victims of physical isolation as a result, others died in the company of their peers.
But dying while surrounded by people, all of whom are unable to help you, still exposes these characters to emotional isolation as no one else can empathize with what they're experiencing.
As for the characters who were isolated, attacked, and survived, they gain an advantage over isolation.
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To be isolated is to be set apart from others for one reason or another, and going through a traumatic experience, such as surviving a killing spree, would act as an isolating factor as it interferes with a character's ability to connect with others.
Usually the main character, the only one who survived the massacre from start to finish, is left traumatized and struggles to reconnect with people after what they endured.
But if a film were to have multiple survivors, all of whom endured the same trauma, then they could overcome the impending isolation due to their shared experiences.
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Despite seven people dying on-screen, five people, all of whom were present through the massacre, survived. These characters now have the chance to beat the isolation they inevitably would have been victim to by conversing with one another.
Interested in seeing how isolation interacts with the other two films I'm analyzing?
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Click on one of the posters below!
