Wes Craven
175 connections found
Filmography
Red Eye 2005 
A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984 
Scream 1996 
The Hills Have Eyes 1977 
Music of the Heart 1999 
My Soul to Take 2010 
Scream 2 1997 
Vampire in Brooklyn 1995 
The People Under the Stairs 1991 
The Last House on the Left 1972 
Wes Craven's New Nightmare 1994 
The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 1985 
Swamp Thing 1982 
Deadly Blessing 1981 
The Serpent and the Rainbow 1988 
Shocker 1989 
Scream 4 2011 
Scream 3 2000 
Deadly Friend 1986 
Cursed 2005 View:
Connections, in both directions
Much like the soundtrack serves as a direct homage to the music at the time, the overall experience, even down to the narrative and directing style themselves, serves as a faithful tribute to the teen-oriented slashers at the time, specifically Scream .
But what’s old will always be new again in Hollywood, and just as Scream affectionately skewered (and briefly revived) the disposable body-count horror of the ’80s, so now is Wes Craven’s watershed hit inspiring its own wistful copycats.
There are some meta echoes banging about: There are sideways references to Jason Voorhees and those nutty kids from “Scream” (director and co-writer of all three films, Leigh Janiak, helmed some episodes of the short-lived “Scream” TV series), and there’s a recreated sequence from “The Shining.”
Director and co-writer Leigh Janiak is clearly paying homage to Drew Barrymoore’s opening cameo in Scream , right down to the masked killer’s black hooded robe and the slow-motion shot of the murderer chasing down his final victim (Maya Hawke) just as salvation seems nigh.
Set in Shadyside, the cursed sister town to neighboring Sunnyvale (imagine if Tree Hill shared a border with Silent Hill), the film opens with a murder in a mall that pretty closely mirrors the opening murder of Scream, down to the recreation of a few of that scene’s iconic shots.
Janiak sets her stall out early with a terrific cold open that homages Scream with a certain Stranger Things star in the place of Drew Barrymore.
His victims, at least at the start, are the sort who violate the first two rules in Scream , the ones warning off sex and substances if you want to survive.
After the “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream” franchises, Wes Craven was aptly known as the “Master of Horror,” at least in late 20th Century movie lore.
Set to release on Friday November 13 on all formats, Freaky delivers a high school horror mash-up centred around Homecoming which wears every single one of its forebears on its sleeve – from Scream to Carrie to, of course, Child’s Play, Big and all the Freaky Fridays .
Stealing a page from Scream and other slasher classics, a group of frisky teens are sitting around talking about the Blissfield Butcher, a mythical killer who has apparently been around for decades, but none of them actually believe exists.
Funnier than Scream , and much gorier, too, it’s just as smart about what it’s sending up.
Freaky opens with a spot-on ‘80s slasher film prologue (borrowing, perhaps, from Wes Craven’s Scream).
By substituting a sleepy small town with a college campus and an underachieving sorority girl for a middle-aged weatherman, Landon and writer Scott Lobdell got to play with the tropes of the post-Scream campus slasher movie, with Jessica Rothe’s heroine Tree emerging as an ingenious variation on the idea of the Final Girl .
The hook to 2017’s Happy Death Day was a killer one – Groundhog Day by way of Scream.
The first film, Happy Death Day (essentially, Scream meets Groundhog Day ) saw sleepy-eyed blond co-ed Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe, who I can't help thinking should be called Blake Livelier) waking up, repeatedly, in an unfamiliar dorm bed, where a sweetly geeky stranger, Carter Davis (Israel Broussard, who resembles a young Tom Hanks) would greet her before his room-mate Ryan, (Phi Vu) would burst into the room.
If 2017’s surprise time-loop slasher Happy Death Day was rightfully called a mash-up of Groundhog Day and Scream, then its follow-up, Happy Death Day 2U can be called a strange combination of Weird Science, The Butterfly Effect , and any episode of Scooby-Doo .
In Happy Death Day, Christopher Landon’s original campus fantasy horror, it was Tree (Jessica Rothe) who was trapped in this grisly but rather enjoyable mixture of Groundhog Day and Scream.
Moreover, unlike the characters in Wes Craven’s meta-slasher franchise Scream (1996-2011), HDD2U’s characters don’t seem to be aware of B-movie conventions.
Ever since they achieved sentience in 1996, slasher movies have been trying to find new ways to be self-aware without just rehashing Wes Craven's Scream.
Though not quite as inspired or consistent as the similarly self-mocking likes of “The Cabin in the Woods,” “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil,” or the first two “Scream” pics, this is good fun that should delight genre fans.
Screenwriters Joshua John Miller & M.A. Fortin have come up with a twist on the meta-horror movie that gave us films like "Scream" and "The Cabin in the Woods."
Similar to the approach of 1996's " Scream " while going in an entirely new direction, the film's meta-savvy approach blurs the line between fiction and reality while nonetheless confronting the truths of the characters with heartfelt affection.
This is Scream at a lower decibel.
"Scream" meets "Pleasantville" in the new movie "The Final Girls," a playful deconstruction of the slasher film that ultimately packs a surprisingly affecting punch.
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Directed by Drew Goddard
influenced by Scream (1996), Shocker (1989)
Themes Plot Dialogue
Horror fans will dig the references and the numerous subversions, which recall the intelligence of Wes Craven’s original Scream and then some, while even the more meek among you can’t fail to be impressed at how this keeps you guessing.
The premise isn't that original, harkening back to other self-referential films like Scream , (a friend also reminded me of one 1988 horror film in particular that has a strikingly similar plot), but the execution is satisfying, and the last 15 minutes or so are just about enough to make any horror fan worth his/her salt squee in delight.
Like its spiritual heirs - the "Scream" franchise, Eli Roth's "Cabin Fever" and the collected works of Sam Raimi - "The Cabin in the Woods" comes not only to praise the slasher-, zombie- and gore-fests of yore but to critique them, elaborating on their grammatical elements and archetypal figures even while searching for ways to put them to novel use.
Whedon has a distinctively snarky, smart-alecky writing style that has earned him legions of fans, and it is certainly on display here: the dialogue is full of knowing, sarcastic asides, and an aggressive pop culture awareness that recalls Scream.
It's a witty deconstruction of fantasy genres in the post-modern Scream vein and a weirdly wonderful twist on the whole Evil Dead scenario that ensures continual surprises.
"The Cabin in the Woods" is fun and meta-aware, but hardly original - it's like the Scooby Doo group entered an Evil Dead/Chainsaw mashup via The Truman Show and "Scream" already ran with the concept.
Thanks to the resurgence of “Scream” and “Halloween,” not to mention originals “Happy Death Day,” “Fear Street” and “Freaky,” the slasher genre has enjoyed a grand revival, but “X” feels like the apex mountain for this new era of young people getting their bodies mutilated in grotesque, often, brutal methods.
This teamed with the darkly humorous moments puts it in a similar vein to popular franchise Scream , with X shaping up to be another fun entry into the genre.
A much better “Texas Chainsaw” tribute than that wretched thing on Netflix last month and way smarter about slasher movies than the recent “Scream” sequel, writer-director Ti West’s X is a deliciously grisly entertainment existing on a level of craft well above most multiplex offerings, genre or otherwise.
Early successes for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th inspired a barrage of films over the ’80s and early ’90s, including The Prowler, April Fool’s Day, and Sleepaway Camp, that ultimately culminated with the reimagining of the genre with 1996’s Scream.
She displayed it earlier this year in, haha, the new “Scream,” but I far prefer this flavor of post-modern horror, which makes its references and bonds with its audience in images and moments rather than sub-Williamson dialogue.
When not acting himself, Ti West writes and directs his own work — notably the 2011 film The Innkeepers — as well as television episodes of “Scream” for MTV and “The Exorcist” for Fox.
Halloween (2018)
Directed by David Gordon Green
influenced by Scream (1996), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream 3 (2000)
Visuals Themes
In terms of the slasher elements to Halloween (2018) , the kills are incredible, with some playing off-screen and some of them just going right for the jugular (which is literal in some cases), and I love the fact that while Green wants to make something that will appeal to modern audiences, he often leans into the classicism of Carpenter’s approach to violence in Halloween (1978), thereby delivering a mix of brutality that honors its past while also making great strides in bringing familiar slasher tropes back to the big screen in new ways, akin to what Wes Craven was able to do with the Scream series.
Green ( The Pineapple Express ) and McBride have crafted a clever homage to the kind of flick that Jamie Kennedy geeked out on so memorably in the original 1996 Scream .
Today, after an onslaught of franchise building, it’s easy to take for granted that the original “Halloween” (1978), “Friday the 13th” (1980) and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984) were actually inventive before they were satirized in “Scream” (1996), my own teenage touchstone.
While not completely meta in its laughs like a Scream, the film does play homage to its cannon and is littered with Easter eggs and call backs.
It’s hard to argue the point: Years have passed since the self-referential horror of the “Scream” franchise, not to mention snazzier home invasion thrillers from “You’re Next” to “The Babadook” that took the “Halloween” mold to fresh heights.
(Yes, even the second gets blipped from the continuity, along with Laurie’s blood relation to her stalker, which one of the film’s sub- Scream class of self-aware teens confirms aloud.)
Though Michael Powell's Peeping Tom does turn out to have a connection here, not once is one of modern horror's new standards ever given its due.
With references to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and even Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (the first movie "to show the killer's point of view," we're told), Scream 4 is like a perpetual film studies course, a reboot with a lesson plan.
Fun, fancy window dressing that occasionally hits the right note – name-checking the great but often unheralded Peeping Tom as the first true slasher movie will undoubtedly give film buffs a warm glow – but also slightly detracts from Scream 4’s true purpose: taut setpieces of bloody carnage.
Despite the surveillance/found footage trend of presenting deaths as supposedly being caught on amateur camera – either by accident or filmed Peeping Tom style by the voyeuristic killer – this theme only gets paid lip service.
Scream 7 (2026)
Directed by Kevin Williamson
influenced by Scream (1996), Scream 3 (2000), Scream 4 (2011), Scream 2 (1997), Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The People Under the Stairs (1991)
Visuals Dialogue Plot
Williamson revisits his old texts, quoting his own lines, as well as some of Craven’s directorial ones, as at least two sequences in Scream 7 repeat similar episodes from 1996’s Scream, almost shot-for-shot.
Where Scream 7 proves most effective is in its opening sequence, continuing the franchise tradition of hitting the ground running with a sharp, well-executed set piece to launch the film.
The small town setting shifts the series back to the mode of the first, fourth, and fifth films; Scream never really felt comfortable in big city settings.
Scott's fatal mistake was chasing nostalgia. But beyond that, Williamson's first kills here are more vicious than those in Scream. They're more on par with the graphic violence seen in the torture porn trend that would follow the release of Scream 3 — a trend that is part of the reason this franchise went fallow for 11 years.
The latter, the heir apparent to Jamie Kennedy’s horror scholar Randy Meeks, can barely muster up the ritual monologue that typically plays like a state of the union address for film nerds. You know that moment where every Scream movie self-referentially lays down the intent and rules for whatever sequel, “requel” or current trend they’re supposed to be skewering.
After Ghostface’s reign of terror in New York City, the story shifts back to a small town, a welcome reset for the Scream franchise.
There's Someone Inside Your House (2021)
Directed by Patrick Brice
influenced by Scream (1996)
Plot Themes
A derivative slasher flick with elements lifted from “Scream” (1996) and “The Hunt” (2020) but sans any of their genre-defining resonance.
The 90s were home to a specific breed of slasher with films like Scream (1996), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), and Urban Legend (1998) featuring intended targets who are both youthful and overly aware and themes that tease social commentary and a newfound morality.
The film, based on the book of the same name by Stephanie Perkins, takes inspiration from several other slasher movies (the most obvious being Scream ) but plays on more modern fears as well.
The Fear Street series nods so often at Scream , Friday the 13th , and The Witch that it fell short in developing an identity of its own.
Patrick Brice’s slasher adaptation There’s Someone Inside Your House could snugly fit into the '90s subgenre boom post- Scream when teenage wasteland slashers were all the rage.
The ‘self-aware slasher’ was popularised after Wes Craven’s Scream changed the sub-genre forever in the 1990s, spawning tons of less than worthy successors to the master’s throne.
Throughout the rest of film, viewers are treated to a series of horror film homages including Scream, Carrie, and Friday the 13th just to name a few.
Speaking of humor, the obvious (and overused) comparison would be to Wes Craven’s Scream, or maybe Joseph Kahn’s criminally underrated Detention.
It was as if they’d seen “Heathers” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Scream” and “Scary Movie” and a dozen other self-referential hipster-slasher-clever films, and they were “owning it” and not acting it.
Here, they are teamed as deadly high school divas in a cynical, colourful exercise in satirical slasherdom, which harks back to such tart confections as Heathers, Scream and Election.
Fashionable, gorgeous and fearlessly attuned to what they want, these girls always look cool, whether they’re cheerleading, casually strolling their twitter feeds, or hacking through a corpse, and the film’s snazzy slang and edgy aesthetic calls to mind killer teen movies of the past, from Heathers, to Scream, to Jennifer’s Body, but falls just shy of matching their greatness.
Ever since “Scream” evolved from an affectionate send-up of horror genre tropes into a genuine money-minting franchise, there have been nearly as many tongue-in-cheek slasher movie homages as actual slasher movies, all too many of which were content to simply mimic the idiosyncrasies of their Reagan Era influences, rather than do something interesting with them.
Stranger Things (2016)
Directed by David Champion
influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream (1996)
Themes Visuals Plot
Bölümler yoğunlukla 1984 tarihli Wes Craven mucizesi, “Elm Sokağı’nda Kabus” u bize ziyadesiyle yaşattı.
Korku öğeleri sıklıkla kullanılan dizide, ayrıca 1984 tarihli Wes Craven klasiği Elm Sokağı’nda Kabus’tan izleri sıklıkla görürüz.
Wes Craven’s 1984 horror masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street left its fingerprints on the dreamlike terror of the Upside Down.
From the opening minutes of Stranger Things, it’s obvious that creators Matt and Ross Duffer want to put you in mind of ET, Halloween, A Nightmare On Elm Street and, most of all, Stephen King’s It.
The series is a love letter to horror and science fiction genres of the 80s, paying clear homage to the best movies of its timem such as Goonies, Nightmare on Elm Street, and all things Stephen King.
For one, you had kids trying to summon an ominous entity who was able to reach out to grab you through seemingly latex walls. But also think about the Upside Down world, which with its stark, dark mirroring of humdrum Hawkins was similar to how Freddy would pull us into a topsy-turvy dreamscape.
Get Out (2017)
Directed by Jordan Peele
influenced by The People Under the Stairs (1991), Scream (1996)
Themes
One has to wonder whether Peele is a fan of Brian Yuzna’s 1989 “Society” and Wes Craven’s 1991 “The People Under the Stairs,” since there are echoes of both here.
It’s the kind of film that couldn’t come from within the Hollywood machine (see: George Clooney’s Oscar acceptance speech), and, considering that it has been twenty-five years since Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs , one of the paltry few horror movies with a black lead which acts as a direct commentary on white suburbia, it’s long overdue.
(The Stepford Wives is the obvious reference point, but it might also remind you of, say, The People Under the Stairs.)
Wes Craven patterning the inner city-exploiting villains of The People Under the Stairs after Ronald and Nancy Reagan, for instance, was clearly a conscious choice.
Although dated, Scream might be the best analog.
While this may not seem like a mind-blowing moment to begin a film with, it airs a resemblance to Wes Craven’s Scream , where characters within the film make fun of a situation they may find themselves in and the ridiculous reactions that typically ensue.
While it contains a clever blend of horror, thriller and mystery indicative of his existing style, there are also references to countless genre-defying horror films staples, from Dario Argento’s Suspiria to Wes Craven’s Scream sequels.
But even this crescendo kills its own buzz by dragging on too long, with a misfiring killer revelation reminiscent of the original “Scream” (in which it was supposed to be preposterous), then one of the more nonsensically out-of-nowhere lesbian kisses in recent celluloid memory.
As you probably already guessed, more bodies began to pile up, lending a Scream vibe without any of the sharp writing.
It reaches towards Kevin Williamson’s Scream, and snaps backwards towards Tragedy Girls landing nowhere near either.
When they allegedly make contact with the spirit world, and various students begin turning up missing, Seance sets its sights on a slightly tamer version of Scream for the Charmed set.
Wholly unimaginative and unoriginal, like a torpid “Scream,” “Séance” feels like the result of a haphazard night of manipulating a Ouija board—Barrett trying to act as a conduit to better films and filmmakers of the past and connecting with nothing or no one meaningful.
Halloween (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter
influenced Scream (1996), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream 4 (2011), The People Under the Stairs (1991)
Plot Themes
Were the picture not well-made, it would be but a footnote in history, and subsequent copycats (e.g., " Friday the 13th ," "Prom Night," "Silent Night, Deadly Night"), satirical treatments (e.g., HBO's "Tales from the Crypt" and the " Scream " series) and spoofs (e.g., "Student Bodies" and the " Scary Movie " franchise) would cease to exist.
Halloween was the film that earned Jamie Lee Curtis the infamous title of "Scream Queen."
The constant references to Halloween in particular are more hamfisted homage than plot device, and the aforementioned video camera gimmick is wasted.
References to Carpenter's original Halloween abound; several minutes of footage from that film are used here in a uniquely effective manner.
"Scream" may be a cut above the gore fests that line the dimly lit back wall at your video store, but it is a far cry from genre classics like "Halloween" or Craven's own "Nightmare On Elm Street."
Of the "Big Three" slasher series'?" Halloween ," " Friday the 13th ," and this one?the…
Choose or Die (2022)
Directed by Toby Meakins
influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Themes Visuals
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Direct references to A Nightmare on Elm Street mingle with a concept reminiscent of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch , ghoulish omnipotent Saw isms, the retro fetishism of 8-Bit Christmas and the dumb gamer throwbackiness of Pixels .
Netflix’s Choose or Die draws heavy inspiration from A Nightmare on Elm Street in tone, style, visual references, and even voice-over by Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund.
It's a throwback to 1980s horror, right down to the voice cameo of A Nightmare on Elm Street 's Robert Englund.
We see this early on, as a large poster of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is plastered against a wall in full view.
It sees Eddie Marsan’s collector of 80s memorabilia (there is a poster of A Nightmare on Elm Street on the wall of his man cave, which is amusing because while the cast list does involve the embodiment of the iconic slasher Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund only has a quick but impressionable voiceover role) unpacking and firing up a forgotten CYOA (choose your adventure) game.
Scream (2022)
Directed by Tyler Gillett
influenced by Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream 3 (2000), Scream 4 (2011)
Visuals Themes
This year’s Scream (not to be confused with 1996’s Scream , of course) contains a moment with a Matryoshka doll of references: a low-angle shot of a showerhead echoes the scene from movie-within-a-movie Stab in 1997’s Scream 2 , which was obviously itself nodding to 1960’s Psycho .
In order to illustrate exactly what’s so wrong with Matt Bettinelli-Olphin and Tyler Gillet’s Scream (from here on referred to as 5cream , because I genuinely think I might have a psychotic break if I keep trying to talk about both the original film and this reboot), I’ll present to you a working theory of mine about the intentions behind Wes Craven’s Scream series and how they slowly changed over time.
The first entry in the franchise without Wes Craven at the helm, Scream combines a fresh cast with legacy characters for a bloody, ruthless whodunnit.
Wes Craven’s Scream franchise pumped fresh blood into the veins of the floundering slasher genre at the end of the 90s and has continued to inspire the horror landscape over two decades later.
When the first Scream released in 1996, the film was instantly iconic among horror fans for its ability to deftly tread the line between homage and parody as it spoke to the rise of slashers.
This year’s Scream (not to be confused with 1996’s Scream , of course) contains a moment with a Matryoshka doll of references: a low-angle shot of a showerhead echoes the scene from movie-within-a-movie Stab in 1997’s Scream 2 , which was obviously itself nodding to 1960’s Psycho .
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream (1996)
Themes
Camp Miasma is an 80s slasher franchise once revered and since revived to the point of zombification. Think Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Jane Schoenbrun has spoken of the month spent watching all the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels at 11 years old.
…creating a mash-up of the better-known canon — Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (in order of appearance)…
…felt more in line with a lesser Scream sequel…
Wes Craven's "Scream" sought to dissect slashers, and featured characters who were well-versed in horror movies. But even "Scream" is 30 f***ing years old at this point. Its sequels ran out of critical juice long ago, and its fans have aged into middle-aged a-holes like me.
Wes Craven’s proto-Scream deconstruction of a genre he helped to build.
Scary Movie (2000)
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans
influenced by Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997), Scream 4 (2011)
Plot Themes
Although the prologue has been spoofed numerous times since, most notably in 2000's " Scary Movie ," it has not lost its unblinkingly terse power.
Unknown writer Kevin Williamson waited for people to forget that horror was schlock and staleness and, when the time was write, wrote a parody of the genre called "Scary Movie", later changed to "Scream".
There are some good reasons why the name of Wes Craven's new movie was changed from "Scary Movie" to "Scream."
Now, after the Scream trilogy and its many imitations, that particular theme doesnt work so well.
If you have not seen "Scream," then there is no purpose in seeing "Scary Movie."
"Scary Movie" not only sends up the "Scream" franchise but also the whole Dimension horror catalog and beyond--including even "The Blair Witch Project."
My Bloody Valentine (2009)
Directed by Patrick Lussier
influenced by Scream (1996)
Dialogue Themes Plot
The overly dramatic dialogue, which could have been lifted straight out of The O.C. , combined with its deliriously over-the-top blood drenched carnage also evokes the Scream films.
This is all very familiar - and take out the 3D element and My Bloody Valentine wouldn't be half as fun - but the film admirably decides not to take itself too seriously or push smug Scream -like self-reflexivity.
Director Patrick Lussier (noted as the editor of the Scream franchise) mostly just lines up the usual pretty girls and even prettier boys on an assembly line of slaughter, which ensures that his movie won’t live beyond a few weekends of audiences out for a cheap, lazy thrill.
Or someone else? "My Bloody Valentine" may not be horribly acted, but in a post-"Scream" and post-"Scary Movie" era, it's difficult to squeeze any more blood from this low-brow/high-camp turnip.
It's Scream before Scream, minus the deconstructive verve.