What’s Aged the Best?
The Ghostface mask; the opening scene; the Halloween homages; two high school kids as the killers; the fame-seeking Courtney Cox reporter as a nineties artifact; the video store; the cell phone
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:27:42Read transcript
- The mask is amazing and still kind of scary, the droopy ghost that turns up every Halloween among the trick-or-treaters; whoever looked at all the candidate masks and chose it deserves an Oscar.
- The mask resembles Munch's painting The Scream, yet the movie was called Scary Movie through production until months before release, so the match between title and mask is a strange coincidence.
- The opening scene has aged stupendously and all still works, though its dependence on a landline stuck out and is deferred to the worst list; the Halloween references have aged nicely, Billy Loomis as a homage to Dr. Loomis and the line about running to the McKenzies, and the last forty minutes play the whole Halloween movie.
- Two high school kids rather than an adult turning out to be the serial killers was something nobody was thinking about in 1996; their confession to killing Sidney's mother and calling her a whore got dark.
- Reportedly the makers could not settle the killers' motive, split between something personal involving Billy's father and Sidney's mother and the idea that no motive is scarier, so they did both, which leaves Matthew Lillard's character joining out of peer pressure.
- The killers get mock respect for killing the mother and waiting a whole year, incredible dedication for seventeen-year-olds in a plot that makes no sense.
- The Courtney Cox reporter trying to turn the murders into a book and fame is dated but has aged nicely because that was how you became famous in the nineties, before sex tapes and YouTube; she seems a collage of people involved in crimes rather than based on anyone.
- Loved that a video store employee is a key part of the movie; video stores were an important part of the moviegoing experience and of movies themselves from 1993 to 1997. — Sean Fennessey
- The Quentin Tarantino video store stories are recalled, video stores are nostalgic now, and the town's curfew sending everybody to the video store at four is a fun idea; the cell phone itself is thought to have aged well because hardly anyone had one in 1996.