by Cornelia Laing, Guest Writer

Great horror movie franchises are rarely built. There tends to be fatigue as franchises carry on and their killers, monsters, death-representers and/or memorable characters become the common association.

Pop culture and Halloween over the years bring back memories and scares for those fond of not being able to sleep. “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Saw,” “Alien,” “Final Destination,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Jaws” are just some of the horror/scary movie franchises that come to mind.

With many of these franchises, you see something familiar: a great first movie with so-so films following. There is, however, one franchise that constantly delivers: “Scream.” “Scream” is so self-aware that it could be off-putting if it was not such a blast to watch.

I feel that all four films cohesively make a great franchise — not because they all fit together, but rather for their ability to surprise the audience, change tone and have one of the best final girls in horror history.

The films follow Sidney Prescott as throughout her life she is stalked by different people taking on the mask of Ghostface. She is originally targeted by the murderers of her mother. As the years go on, new people take on the persona. Sidney, Gail Weathers and Dewey are the only characters who continually survive.

In the opening scene of “Scream,” we watch for 10 minutes as teenager Casey Becker goes from making popcorn to being murdered. How it starts and ends is built on suspense, created through canted camera angles, sound design and jump scares along with a game of movie trivia — movie trivia specifically for scary movies.

There is really only one way to survive “Scream,” according to our killer(s), and that is to know how scary movies work.

This is reiterated by Randy, a video store clerk, throughout the movies as he laments about “the rules.” The rules, to be clear, are: 1) never have sex; 2) never drink or do drugs; and 3) never say “I’ll be right back.” Scream, as a franchise, is built from a filmmaker’s love for scary movies that he transfers to the characters in the film.

Wes Craven, who helmed the first “Nightmare of Elm Street,” directed all four of the “Scream” movies. In the opening of the first “Scream” movie Casey even says to the mysterious caller on the phone that the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” was scary but the rest sucked.

The film also finds time between gruesome murders to critique the ways of society. The details of Sidney’s mom’s murder and the trial of the killer are all found out because of the news on the TV.

We do not have characters spelling stuff out and we have the added benefit of believing news media is gossipy and sordid. This perception of news — and those who work for it — does bring about one of the franchise’s best characters.

Gail Weathers, played terrifically by Courteney Cox, first comes off as a hack reporter with no morals. She writes a book about Sidney’s mom’s murder and the trial of the person Sidney thought she saw commit it.

Weathers also makes Sidney realize she might have identified the wrong killer and eventually saves Sidney’s life. She develops as reporter and as a person, and her romance with Dewey is integral to many of her changes.

I love “Scream” for its commitment to appreciating the cultural capital audiences have built over the years when it comes to scary movies. Even with all the knowledge the audience has built up about the genre, Scream lets you know it knows all the cliches you do.

Randy is the character who is supposed to be the audience, discussing how the film should play out. He makes reference to horror throughout, whether it’s “The Exorcist” or scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis. In the climatic scene at Stu’s house, “Halloween” is playing on the TV as people are getting murdered.

When Sidney smashes the nearest convenient item — a TV — onto a killer, the scene from Halloween plays where Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode also grabs the nearest convenient item — a hanger — to stab Michael Myers in the eye.

“Scream” excels as a franchise by acknowledging that the audience is scary movie intelligent. It plays a game with the audience: are your expectations right or wrong?

by Georgie Riggs, Arts and Entertainment Editor

I haven’t seen that many scary movies, but I have seen nine “Nightmare on Elm Streets” — including the Michael Bay-produced reboot. As someone who usually resorts to looking up a horror movie on Wikipedia to read the plot summary instead of seeing it in person, it’s odd that I can say I’ve actually seen a full scary movie franchise.

For the unenlightened — or unenfrightened? — “A Nightmare on Elm Street” features the killer Freddy Krueger who wears a striped sweater, only exists in dreams and murders his teenage victims only as they are sleeping — often in a boiler room dreamscape. Freddy is scary and mysterious — at least in the first film — like most slasher villains, but he also represents something more abstract and universal in his subconscious lurking.

Of course, “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th” and the majority of slasher films are also dealing with an abstract, universalized fear. They just place those fears into one anonymous, infallible man. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” does something different, presenting an entirely new and original way for horror movie franchises to ascribe fear to its villain.

The abstract is embraced rather than fully humanized in “Nightmare,” which negates comfort in knowing that if you just killed Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, you’ve killed the evil. Freddy Krueger, however, is more than just a burned man in a striped sweater: he represents the entire state of dreaming.

The dream conceit is best illustrated in its imagery and death setups. The best known scenes in "Nightmare" come from the first in the franchise, directed by Wes Craven, horror giant and “Scream” creator. Craven ignores reality entirely in crafting his excessively expressive death scenes. The first killing in the film drags a girl up a wall and onto the ceiling, leaving an impossibly large trail of blood in her path. Later, her corpse appears in an empty school hallway, wrapped in plastic; this leads Nancy — the first film’s final girl played by Heather Lagenkamp — into the boiler room with Freddy.

The dream setting leads to most murder taking place in the bed in equally surreal and weird ways. Nancy’s boyfriend is killed by Freddy within the mattress of his bed. Freddy drags him — along with his television set and his record player — into the bed, which results in gallons of blood erupting from the bed. The image recalls the elevator of blood sequence in “The Shining” in that it communicates more emotion than fear.

All of these images may sound excessively gory — and they are. But the dream setting means they are charged with a deeper meaning. If what happens in dreams is both real and unreal, the scariest thing about the world might just be how much of it is ruled by our own subconscious. It’s not just violence for the sake of violence but violence meant to build increasingly impossible images that lead to cathartically campy conclusions.

This cathartic camp is probably the best way to describe the rest of the franchise. Moments of truly original imagery are interspersed with scenes meant to be scary but are so bad that they are funny. Different directors for seven sequels means different styles and varying levels of quality, adding to the eclectic joys of watching the full franchise: you’re always going to get something new and unexpected.

One of the most common insults of slasher films is one that I am guilty of believing as well: they are all made of the same tropes featuring dumb teenagers and terrifying serial killers. The ‘90s and ‘00s were populated with clever horror movie satire seen in “Scream” and not-so-clever parody seen in “Scary Movie.” But “Nightmare” is just as aware of these tropes; it features smart teenage protagonists who spend the runtimes of the films trying to stay awake to figure out clever ways to escape an increasingly caricatured killer.

With “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” you get the experience of late ‘70s and early ‘80s slasher — reckless teen sex and synthy scores are aplenty — with the unexpected logic of dreams taking the images and plots into a bizarre world that’s part-horror and part-comedy. You can have your camp and eat it too — just as long as you chase it with a gallon of coffee and a handful of caffeine pills so you never fall asleep again.

Trinitonian

Trinitonian

Point/Counterpoint: Best Slasher Franchise