5 Feet of Fury

Everything old is old again: Lynn Crosbie reviews ‘Scream 4’

Lynn Crosbie writes:

I take exception to this film being deemed the first example of historiographic metafiction, to use postmodernist maven’s Linda Hutcheon’s phrase.

The underrated, and largely ignored Jason Lives: Friday the 13th, Part VI, released in 1986, is rife with this sort of parodic gesture: When Jason is approaching a cabin filled with child campers, for example, one of them is anxiously reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit.

In another scene, Jason appears on a deserted road, and a hot, female counsellor declares, as she accelerates her car, “I’ve seen enough horror movies to know when a guy in a mask shows up, it’s time to go!”

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This is why I can’t watch newly released films. Twenty year old fanboys for whom Star Wars counts as “an old movie” praise the latest “innovative” flick, unaware that somebody already made the same movie 40 years ago, and did it better, with 1/100th the money.

It is no fun sitting beside me while I mutter “That’s supposed to be Edith Head” or “He’s gonna say he hid the pocketwatch up his ass” or “Duh?! Heathers!?!”