- For a long time, this was the only one I owned on DVD (yeah, I know, I’m odd) so I’ve always had a soft spot for it. A lot of people hate this film for some reason and see it as really weak, so I hope this rewatch doesn’t open my eyes to its suckiness and ruin it forever. That was the downside of the Musings On Marvel series, it really opened my eyes to a lot of issues those films have and made it slightly harder to enjoy them. Doing these is like dissecting a frog, you cut it open and accidentally kill it.
- A great horror movie should make you feel uncomfortable very quickly. This film starts with the logo for Dimension Films, an offshoot of The Weinstein company. So, erm, job done, I guess?
- So since the last film Cotton has become a talk show host, apparently the number one rated one in the country, but they all say that.
- A jump scare utilising the scariest sound in human history; a song by Creed. Terrifying.
- “okay Cotton, you know I don’t like your Stab games”. Wait, what exactly does Cotton do with his girlfriend at his house? Does their sexual roleplay involve murder? That’s……….not normal is it?
- Cotton removes his jacket for seemingly no reason, almost just to show that Liev Schrieber had been working out. Actually, if rumours are to be believed that’s the exact reason that happened, he insisted on it.
- This film came out at a really weird time, Hollywood was terrified of receiving backlash for seemingly causing the Columbine massacres so was keeping a watchful eye on violence in cinema. It got to the point where the producers wanted no blood at all in this film, how exactly would that have worked? I mean, you can do that in a new franchise but to go from 50 gallons in the first film to nothing in the third? You would have noticed the complete tonal 180 and it would have ruined it, which the producers would then blame on everybody except themselves.
- “If we stop making horror movies, all the psychos would retire?” I doubt it, they don’t have the greatest pension plan.
- “he was making a movie called Stab, he was stabbed” is used as a reason for police to believe the killing of Cotton was linked to the film. Which kind of makes me want to twat Robert Downey Jr. round the face with an Iron, man.
- “you think serious black actors can just throw away jobs?” to prove his point he then mentions Usher and LL Cool J, who nobody takes seriously.
- Jay and Silent Bob make a cameo appearance, that’s….odd to think they exist in this universe.
- Scream goes for a random ghostly jump scare. It’s weird as this is the catalyst for Sidney returning from her self-imposed exile, which was the killers plan all along, but the killer can’t force this hallucination on her, so what would he have done if this never happened? His entire plan was focused on drawing her out, yet the only thing that does so is something he can’t control and is based entirely on luck.
- “how are we supposed to learn our lines when there’s a new script every 15 fucking minutes?”, weren’t you just complaining that you’re only in two scenes? So no matter what changes it’s not as though you have a lot to learn.
- “who gets killed third? You do”, and there we have the worst line reading in the history of the series.
- So because of all the deaths, the films get cancelled, which is kind of odd as they’re based on real murders that happened about 6 months prior to the films being made. So really they’ll probably just delay it and use it the murders as inspiration for the third film. Speaking of which, why the hell is there a third film? The first Stab film was based on the murders in the first Scream film, which Gale Weathers wrote a book on (which was used as the basis of the script), presumably, the second one is based on the second set of murders, so what’s the third one based on? And as the person who wrote the book which (at least) the first one was based on, wouldn’t Gale know the third one is being made and the details of it?
- Not-Dewey gets blown up by checking a fax in the dark by using a lighter in a room full of gas. So many ways this is basically just luck, what if he had a torch? What if he left the house then looked? What if nobody cared what the fax said?
- Sidney finally comes back to meet the other characters. It takes nearly 50 minutes for Scream to Scream.
- Hey, it’s Heather Matarazzo, a.k.a the girl who’s not Julie Andrews or Anne Hathaway from Princess Diaries.
- Hey, Jamie Kennedy is back by oddly prescient videotape. I suppose that’s one way to kind of bring the character back without it feeling cheap.
- And there goes Heather Matarazzo, shame, she should be in it more, just because she’s awesome.
- Carrie Fisher cameo, playing someone who looks like Carrie Fisher and was nearly in Star Wars but wasn’t in it because she refused to sleep with George Lucas. So a film made by a company that’s an offshoot of Weinstein company has a scene where an actress loses out on a part because she refused to sleep with someone? Well, this just got a lot fucking creepier.
- Okay, the producer of the Stab films is talking about sexually exploiting/raping women to get them parts in films. Talking about how “you have to play by the rules in this town”, and blacklisting actresses who won’t do it or who try to report it. Again, this is a film distributed by an off-shoot of the Weinstein company. This is…..uncomfortable viewing. Like that kind of creeping sensation you get where you feel your skin tightening, or like a hundred spiders are walking up your back.
- “looks like Stab 3 is back in production”. That is not how to announce “crazy psycho killer is in the house”, rather flippant.
- “I did not fuck that pig Milton just to die surrounded by second-rate actors like you”, yet another reference to a producer using his power to sexually exploit young women. This film is making me feel awful.
- Dewey thinks someone is being killed behind a wall of mirrors, so he slowly shoots every single mirror, as opposed to just shooting one then walking through the gap.
- So when the killer takes the mask off he needs to hold the voice changer to his mouth to change his voice, yet he wasn’t holding anything to his face during any other point, is there one in the mask?
- Oddly tweet music accompanying the killer reveal, it sounds like Home Alone music.
- So the killer’s justification is that Sidney gets all the attention that he craves? He’s a Hollywood director, she lives under a fake name in the middle nowhere, he’s definitely the more famous one of the two. Kind of odd as apart from that his motive is pretty logical, even his methods were logical, very few of the deaths are superfluous, even the ones you think are turn out to be “well otherwise they wouldn’t have told people” later on.
- Kind of nice moment when the killer dies holding Sidney’s hand, sort of sweet.
- Random fact, when Sidney stabs the killer with the ice pick, she missed the pad she was supposed to hit, and instead hit flesh, the second time in the series that’s happened.
- And that’s the end of that, and I feel disgusted with Hollywood.
Troubled Productions 