“The Past is Not at Rest.”
Discussing the original Scream trilogy’s weird connection to Greek mythology.
Bring up any horror movie sequel and you’ll always get a mixed, if passionate, response. People either really love them or — more commonly — laud them as the harbinger of an impending bad franchise.
But Scream 2 exists in the magical, albeit small, realm of good sequels.
It expands on the old characters, introduces new ones, and gives us a fresh look at an old “whodunit” formula, all while establishing itself as both a riff on sequels and a great follow-up in its own right.
Is it better than the original? Who can say. The debate between which film is better still rages on like a Greek-god-manifested storm and I am but a humble boat caught in the tempest. Personally, I like both.
We’ve talked at length about how much I love Scream. Its sequel, however, is a whole other animal for me. Young Timothy Olymphant playing a yummy but unhinged film student who has a murder sugar mama? Incredible. Deputy Dewey dropping massive truthbombs on Gale about her emotional unavailability? Astounding.
A brief reference to Cassandra, tragic prophetess of Greek mythology?
I’m immediately invested. Any iteration of ancient history rewrote in a modern setting will always catch my full attention.
It was also a part of a planned trilogy. Following the success of Scream, two more films were immediately lined up, with Williamson on the scripts and Wes Craven ready to direct again. Scream 2 came out without a hitch.
Scream 3 wasn’t so lucky. The Columbine High School massacre happened shortly before filming. Understandably, teen slashers were no longer tasteful, and in a now-infamous moment of modern horror history, what would have been the finale of a brilliant slasher genre was butchered by a new script, a new screenwriter, and repeated studio interference.
It had a few redeemable moments. Fine, mainly the Carrie Fisher cameo.
Despite its many shortcomings, Scream 3 ended up extending its predecessor’s brief mythic moment into a pleasing — and likely accidental — Greek mythology allusion. Cassandra as Sidney was a passing thought that lingered in my mind through the third film. The more I thought about it, the more the story lined up.
“Born from two men that both felt that a woman owed them something — be it her body or her life — the end result was a curse…”
So today, we’ll be discussing a tale as old as time: powerful men propositioning young women and the ripple effects of this form of assault.
The story begins, as most do, with Zeus being a fuckboy. Having impregnated yet another woman, he’s now the proud papa of two twin gods: Artemis and Apollo. Now Apollo — the god of poetry, arts, music, and prophecy — takes after dear old dad. Be it man, woman, or nymph, there is nothing this man won’t try to have carnal relations with.
Now consent in god-human encounters isn’t touched upon too much in Greek stories, but it’s safe to say that there would be some danger in spurning a god’s advances, calling a large power imbalance into play.
Just ask Cassandra, princess of Troy.
As a priestess of Apollo, she vows to remain chaste. Although the story differs in interpretation after this, the main idea seems to be that Apollo — who is basically her boss — thinks that this rule doesn’t apply to him. He offers her the gift of foresight in exchange for sleeping with him. Cassandra agrees, but reneges on her promise when she receives her abilities.
In response, Fuckboy Junior curses her: she will see the future, but no one will believe her visions. She eventually goes mad, witnesses the foretold fall of her city, and is murdered by some king’s jealous wife.
In Scream 2, Sidney is cast as this fateful heroine in a university play.
The meta-universe of Scream is already itself a perfect nod to ancient Greek theater. The self-aware characters — best represented by Randy in the first two films — are our modern day chorus, the actors that communicate directly with the audience about the plot. They know the rules of the “play.” They know that they’re in a production, but cannot stop the events from occurring. They can only comment on them.
Randy’s controversial death is, in a way, a fourth wall break. The audience stand-in, our guide and our safety blanket, is not safe. No one truly is this time around, unless you’re Sidney.
Sidney, like Cassandra, sees all the carnage that is coming her way. She’s the first to insist that the murders are happening again. No one believes her. It’s a classic rendition of the “mad woman” archetype, a woman whose paranoia is discounted only to ultimately be proven correct. Her drama professor even encourages her to use the pain of it in her role, comparing the two women.
“[Cassandra] knew she was cursed.” he adds. “It was her fate and she embraced it.”
Sidney only replies with a sad look of resignation.
Honestly, it does seem like Sid is cursed. Throughout the next two films her friends, allies and even acquaintances die around her, killed by even the most tenuous of connections to her. Only Dewey and Gale prove to have Greek-god levels of resilience.
The only other constant, Ghostface, remains.
Ghostface, in all of his iterations, is ultimately the curse of Apollo. No matter where Sidney goes, the killer will somehow come back. By the time Scream 3 rolls around, she is in total isolation: yet still the murders start again. This girl just can’t catch a break.
So we have our Cassandra and we have her curse — to forever be a murder magnet, but to never die herself.
But who is our Apollo and why did this curse appear? Obviously Sid didn’t promise her virginity to a god and then invoke take-backsies. So why is she suffering?
Once again, the theater scene in Scream 2 has an answer for us.
CHORUS: “And now, alone in Fate’s cruel isolation, stands Cassandra, her kingdom, family, and friends, driven to the winds.”
CASSANDRA: “No crime against gods or man have I committed, saith to speak the truth. And each hideous vision born from my mind has come to pass.
So now, Fate’s vengeful eye…is fixed on me.”
This scene alone basically predicts the new plot of Scream 3. I wouldn’t be surprised if its screenwriter latched on to this one moment — like I clearly have — and just built a reveal around that.
We all know how it goes at this point: people on the set of Stab 3, another movie about Sidney’s life, start getting murdered in the order that their characters die in the script. Sidney, who has been in literal isolation as the Scream 2 chorus suggested, comes out of hiding to help stop the murders.
This time, though, we’re in for a hell of a reveal. Ghostface is Sidney’s secret half-brother Roman (Scott Foley), born out of a gang rape that happened to her mother during her time in Hollywood.
Even typing this out, it sounds nuts. But hey, it happened, and at the risk of losing my horror cred, it was an awesome twist. Aside from my undying love for Tatum Riley, it’s easily one of my favorite parts of Scream as a franchise.
Better still, Roman is ultimately revealed to be the grand orchestrator of the trilogy.
A year prior to the first film, he tracked their mother down in an attempt to be a part of her life. When she spurned his familial advances, he responded in a completely logical way: by filming her having an affair with Billy’s father and showing it to Billy, who then murdered her.
Did I also mention that Roman is a young, cocky filmmaker? As the series — and my own experiences — have shown, that’s prime fuckboy material right there.
He, and film exec John Milton (Lance Henriksen) are ultimately our Apollo.
One orchestrated the rape, and the other the murder of a vulnerable woman.
Milton promised Maureen better film roles if she came to one of his “parties.” He later would tell Sidney that her mother knew the implications of such a thing. Not long after, Roman would tell Sidney that Maureen’s rape “made her into a slut.”
If that’s not victim-blaming, I don’t know what is.
Maureen had no power in either relationship. Just as Cassandra couldn’t explicitly say no to a literal frickin’ god, so too was Maureen’s position compromised. Milton took advantage of her as her boss. Roman took advantage of her desperation to escape her past.
It wasn’t Maureen’s promiscuity then that birthed Ghostface. It was good, old-fashioned misogyny. Born from two men that both felt that Maureen owed them something — be it her body or her life — the end result was a curse on a young woman who committed “no crime against gods or man.”
Like Cassandra, Sidney embraces her fate.
But, unlike Cassandra, we’re given hope to hold on to that Sidney will live to fight another day.
For our new-age Greek heroine, it is an optimistic end to a formerly tragic story.
Scream 3 ends with her stepping out of her self-imposed isolation. She leaves her security gate unlocked. The wind blows her back door open and she turns to look at it, contemplating something with a rare look of peace on her face. She decides to turn her unguarded back on it and leaves it open, no longer bothered by psycho killers or a big electricity bill, apparently.
Whatever happens next, our girl isn’t afraid anymore.
