Review of the film “Scream. The Night Before Christmas by Tyler McIntyre

Tyler McIntyre’s film Scream is released. The Night Before Christmas” (It`sa Wonderful Knife). Mikhail Trofimenkov I found some morbid charm in the way the director combined the butchery techniques of a teen slasher film, a clumsy homage to a great Hollywood Christmas classic, and political satire, even if it’s not clear what exactly.

The original title of the film “This Wonderful Knife” is a cynical paraphrase of the title of Frank Capra’s masterpiece “It’sa Wonderful Life” (1946), which initially failed at the box office, but then became an indispensable “sweet pie” of Christmas programs on American television.

In Capra’s story, a provincial righteous man from the town of Bedford Falls was about to commit suicide, despairing in his endeavors to save his small homeland from the evil banker Potter. But the trainee angel who appeared to him showed the hero how much worse life would be without him.

For McIntyre, the role of the righteous woman falls to a high school student in pink pajamas, Winnie (Jane Widdop), from the no less provincial town of Angel Falls. To be honest, there is no sign of grace on her. So-so heroine of youth comedies, all the stupid details of which are pattered – the director needs to jump from one genre construct to another as quickly as possible – are present on the screen: from the bullying of a girl nicknamed Weird to a quickie in the closet, in which Vinny catches his own, relatively speaking , groom.

And for some reason McIntyre’s angel radically changed his role. Now, in a snow-white cloak of an angel and an equally snow-white mask, a serial killer is stalking the streets of Angel Falls. However, brave Winnie manages to kill the angelic maniac in a deep forest with a terrible shock from a stun gun. Nevertheless, life is so unpleasant to her that she complains about it to the sloppily drawn northern lights and immediately finds herself in a parallel reality, where she could not overcome the maniac.

In contrast, Henry Waters (Justin Long) didn’t just become the permanent mayor. He established something like a military dictatorship in the town. Curfews are nothing compared to public lynchings. The angel, meanwhile, continues to perform the “saber dance.” But no one recognizes Winnie, including her parents, former boyfriend and other classmates: even in the class album, her photo is missing.

Waters is a generic political demagogue, no matter what political orientation: a sinister embodiment of politics as it is. He built, you know, skyscrapers in the spirit of Gotham City with the letter W blatantly shining on the facades.

What is pleasant, however, is that he is driven by self-interest: the desire to acquire, at a bloody price, all more or less valuable real estate. This is pleasant because the selfish motive has almost disappeared from the detective genre over the past quarter century. If earlier the investigator asked the question “who benefits,” today the crime does not benefit anyone. A sexual maniac, a serial killer, traumatized by something in childhood, just breaks out, and, well, brandishes axes and scalpels. In Scream there is at least some motivation for evil, which in some way restores faith that the universe is at least somewhat rationally organized.