Name: Scream (1996)
Start: 2024-10-31T22:00:00-04:00
Location: Tampa Theatre

A Nightmare on Franklin Street” series event
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1h 51m / R / Slasher
TRAILER:

VENUE: Historic Duncan Auditorium
$10.00 - General Admission
$7.00 - Tampa Theatre Members
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Great ideas are only obvious in hindsight. Of course somebody should have made a movie like Scream, we all say, seated comfortably in 2024 when the whole idea of a horror movie that’s about horror movies has been played out, lampooned, revived and reburied over the past 20+ years. But think about the horror movie landscape pre-Scream: From the revival of the slasher movie in 1978 to 1996, probably thousands of teenagers pretended to be murdered on film. Not once did any of them wink to the audience or say “hey, this seems like a movie.” Are we expected to believe they lived in a universe without horror movies? Had Jason’s victims in Friday the 13th Part VII never seen Halloween 4?
Scream’s premise is that they could have. But further than that, the fact that horror movie victims might be familiar with horror movie tropes makes the movie itself scarier. It means no one is safe. It’s metafictional in the best possible way. And yes it had too many sequels, and we all went overboard with metafiction in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, but for at least a minute there, Scream was something that had never been done before.
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Discover the rest of the 2024 “A Nightmare on Franklin Street” series lineup at https://tampatheatre.org/tour-category/nightmare/
Support for the 2024 A Nightmare on Franklin Street series is provided in part by Melting Pot Social. Promotional support is provided by Spookala, Florida’s Horror Convention and Axios Tampa Bay.