Scream Returns (2018)

Let’s go back to the 1970s or 1980s. I’m going to be talking out of my ass for this little bit because it was a time before I was born. Personal video cameras became a more popular thing sometime during those two decades. The transition from film to video made it a whole lot easier for a regular consumer to get their hands on a camera they could use to film whatever they wanted. People became more familiar with these home movie makers. They made home videos. Families doing family things. Stuff like that. They also started making scripted movies.

That’s where no-budget cinema came from. People had access to cameras at a rate that hadn’t been seen before and were able to let their creativity out. People like Todd Sheets rose in prominence through the underground movie scene because they had access to equipment they hadn’t previously had access to. Then came the independent scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s where people like Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, and Steven Soderberg found their footing in the industry. Having access to a device to capture video allowed more people to start their cinematic careers than ever before.

Everything took another step forward with phone technology. As phones got better, the cameras on phones got better. As the cameras on phones got better, more people were able to make creative video output. Places like Vine, TikTok, and YouTube helped creative minds reach wider audiences. Anyone was able to make movie. Or videos. Or content. Whatever they wanted to make, within legal parameters, they were able to make.

All this quick rambling was to set up for this point. Some people, namely the creative types I name-checked already, brought their own ideas to the forefront. They came up with stories. They, in many cases, had original characters they created, going through original stories they wrote. There were some cases where that wasn’t entirely true. Kevin Smith made Cop Out and Richard Linklater remade The Bad News Bears, which didn’t feature their own characters. For the most part, however, these people had their own ideas.

Another subset of creative mind came out of the rise of easily accessible cameras. These people were a little more fanboyish in their creativity. They didn’t simply reference other movies. They used those other movies as the basis of their own movies. They used their access to cameras and other such equipment to make fan films.

There are three main ways fan films could be made. The simplest is for someone to basically remake a movie they like. Off the top of my head, I think I’ve only seen one of these kinds of fan films. On YouTube, you can find something called Live Action Toy Story, where someone remade Toy Story with real toys instead of animation. I also know of a Raiders of the Lost Ark fan film from the 1980s, but I haven’t seen that one.

The second kind of fan film is to reboot the intellectual property in some way, without having the rights owner’s input. The most notable, at least from my knowledge, would be the works of Adi Shankar. He made Dirty Laundry, which brought Tom Jane back as The Punisher, and he made a dark reboot of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers called Power/Rangers. I’ve seen both and they’re each good quality short films. But they are just fan films of what people may have wanted at the time, even though big studios were doing other stuff with those properties.

Finally, there are the fan films that use an intellectual property as a jumping off point for doing their own thing while capitalizing on the other, more popular, property. My example, and the movie I started writing all this to discuss, is Scream Returns. This French film from 2018 followed a bunch of people who were stalked by Ghostface. And, as you may already know, Ghostface was never the same person in the Scream movies. None of the characters from the Scream franchise were in this film. Only the mask made an appearance and, for the most part, it wasn’t even the same mask.

Scream Returns began by basically recreating the opening of the first Scream movie. Instead of “What’s your favourite scary movie?” they went with “What’s your favourite scary video game?” You see, as much as this was a Scream fan film, it was also a video game fan film. One of the production logos that came up at the beginning of the movie featured a PlayStation controller. Someone called a woman who was home alone, quizzing her on horror movies, before chasing her around the house and killing her. That someone wore a Ghostface mask. Only, this Ghostface mask was silver instead of white.

Hard cut to the next scene where the movie went into a Grand Theft Auto V mod. That’s right. There was a whole ten-minute chunk of the movie rendered in Grand Theft Auto V where Trevor got into a fistfight with Ghostface. If you thought the opening scene was all about video games, you hadn’t seen anything yet. The fact that the scene was in the movie at all was crazy. The fact that the characters in that scene, and that scene only, spoke English with heavy French accents took everything another step over the top. This was going to be a bonkers fan film and it probably wouldn’t let up.

Only it did. In the third part of Scream Returns, the audience was taken back to the live action world. I’m not going to get too much into this or the final section because they were basically more of the same from the first segment. There were video games involved. A killer in a Ghostface mask harassed some people. There may have been some teleporting and time shifting and insanity involved in the fourth and final portion. But, all in all, it was just a bunch of French people using the Scream IP to make a movie.

Yet, the fan film suffered in a way that most fan films don’t. Usually, a fan film will ooze with someone’s love of a property. The way that some of them are shot-for-shot remakes done on shoestring budgets with kids (Raiders of the Lost Ark) or toys (Toy Story) shows the investment that people put into making these movies. The Adi Shankar fan films showed an appreciation for a property and an understanding of what the fans of those properties wanted to see. The problem with Scream Returns was that it had none of that love.

Scream Returns took some of the iconography of Scream and put it into this new movie. The Ghostface mask was there, though silver instead of white. The “What’s your favourite scary movie?” line was in there, with video game substituted in. The issue was that it took away one of the biggest strengths of the Scream movies. The meta humour was gone. The characters were no longer self-aware. They no longer followed the horror rules. There was no ability to understand what they were going through because they didn’t bring up any of the rules that built the genre over the century it has existed. This was the element that helped set the Scream franchise apart from the other horror of the mid-to-late 90s, and it was completely absent from the fan film. That felt like a major misstep.

As its own thing, Scream Returns was fine. Replace the Ghostface mask with any other non-IP slasher mask and it would surely not rub me quite as wrong as it did. There would still be the whole Grand Theft Auto V scene that came out of nowhere. And it wasn’t tense or frightening at all. But it was a serviceable little amateur slasher flick. I just wish that, for a movie that claimed to be a fan film, it had represented the franchise it was based on a little better.

A final note about Scream Returns… Even the poster was influenced by the Scream movies. Look at it. That poster wouldn’t be too out of place among at least the first four Scream movies. The fifth and sixth were made after Scream Returns, so the filmmakers didn’t have those for reference.

Fan films come in many shapes and sizes, though there are really two things that they have or should have in common. The first would be an appreciation for the property they are based on. The people making the movie wanted to share their love of what came before, and they presented their love on screen. The other would be an appreciation for the fans. The filmmakers might want to share something that all fans of that property would love. They should be about the love. By fans and for fans.

That all ties back into the introduction of home cameras. Once people were able to access affordable cameras, they were able to declare their love for specific movies and movies in general. Thanks to the internet a little while later, they were able to share their love of the movies by showing the world the movies they made with those cameras. Now that everyone has a camera on their phone or even better cameras outside their phones, and because streaming is so easily done, fan films are all over the place. And it’s very easy to watch them.

Now it’s time for a few notes:

• I’m pretty sure there are no actors from Scream Returns in any other Sunday “Bad” Movies. Let me double check. Yeah, there are none.
• I might as well list off a few slashers that I’ve checked out for Sunday “Bad” Movies. Here are links to Backwoods Bloodbath, Science Crazed, Sleepaway Camp, Slaughter High, New Year’s Evil, Taboo, Santa Claws, and Valentine.
• Have you seen Scream Returns? What did you think? What are your thoughts on fan films? Let me know in the comments, or find me on Threads because that’s where I am.
• If there’s a movie you want me to watch for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know in the comments. I’m open to suggestions and I will get to them.
• I know I was supposed to cover Ringmaster. Yeah yeah. I still need to rewatch it. I haven’t seen it since February. I got a little sidetracked by Spooky Season. It’ll be coming up at some point in the near-ish future. I do have another Spooky Season post to put up, though. One that I’ve been working on for a couple weeks because I couldn’t pass up the chance to watch the movie. It seemed like perfect Sunday “Bad” Movies material. I’ll have something up about Spirit Halloween: The Movie. I’ll see you again when that one goes up.