The Scre4m Trilogy

Abstract

As a trilogy with a belated fourth installment, the Scream films offer a tangible example of the tension between limitation and expansion that the tripartite form sustains. The films are also defined by the tension of self-reflexive genericity, where they achieve a double-voicing that makes explicit their recognition of the codes of the slasher film, while simultaneously mobilizing these codes to conventional effect. From the first sequel onwards, this double-voicing applies not only to the historical codes of the slasher genre but also to the self-reflexive codes of the “postmodern horror” genre that Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) itself made so popular in this way. The tautest examples of quotation in Scream 2 (Craven, 1997), Scream 3 (Craven, 2000), and Scream 4 (Craven, 2011) are therefore those that point backwards (and forwards) to themselves and their own conceit. This chapter will examine the intersection of these tensions in the Scream films to argue that they advance a triadic dialectic that is constituted — and maintained — not through interlocking narratives but through techniques of nesting and ekphrasis. Like a set of Russian dolls, each Scream film neatly fits within the installment that succeeds it, with Scream 4 (Scre4m) nesting, and thus consolidating, the whole original trilogy.