‘Hell Is a Teenage Girl’?: Postfeminism and Contemporary Teen Horror

Abstract

Released over a decade after Scream 3 (2000), the belated fourth instalment of Wes Craven’s iconic teen horror cycle begins with a characteristically arch tableau of meta-textual solipsism: an abyssian postmodern mise-en-abime of films-within-films-within-films. Starring attractive young female performers recognizable to the film’s target demographic from popular television shows such as The Bionic Woman (2008), Heroes (2007–2008), True Blood (2008–2012), Pretty Little Liars (2010–2012), Gossip Girl (2007–2012), Veronica Mars (2004–2007), Friday Night Lights (2006–2011) and The Secret Circle (2010–2011), the protracted opening sequence features a series of bloody murders taking place within interchangeably affluent domestic spaces during a series of equally interchangeable ‘girly’ nights in. A film featuring meta-textual jokes about the predictable banality of meta-textuality, Scream 4’s (2011) baroque introduction sardonically critiques — and then knowingly recycles — the widely perceived clichés of teen horror cinema as a series of highly photogenic, but equally disposable, young women are offered up for visual gratification before the film systematically despatches them with crudely generic efficiency.