Der Horrorfilm hat eine lange Geschichte, denn seine ersten Atemzüge können wir in das Jahr 1890 zurückverfolgen. Jonathan Barken, Redakteur bei Bloody Disgusting, belegte im letzten Semester einen Kurs an der Universität von Michigan mit dem Titel „The History of Horror After Psycho“.
Gegenstand dieser Vorlesung waren Klassiker wie Alien, Der Exorzist oder das Texas Chainsaw Massaker. Am letzten Tag des Semesters zeigte der Professor eine Kopie von Scream. Als der Film aus war, kam Wes Craven persönlich durch die Tür, um mit den Studenten und Studentinnen über die Geschichte des Horrorfilms zu diskutieren. Natürlich kam auch Scream 4 kurz zur Sprache.
Hier ein kleiner Auszug aus dem Gespräch:
“Over the history of horror, what does it take to viscerally affect a viewer and is there a difference between what it took in the past versus now?
Wes Craven (W.C.): Well, I found that in order to viscerally affect someone, you need to cut them [laughs]. Well, everyone says „How many gallons of blood do you need for a horror film?“ I never find it‘s that. Yes, you can have a scene that‘s very violent but I find that if you have something that gets under the skin of the audience in other ways and that usually has to do with the more human side of it, even with Last House (on The Left).
And doing something that‘s not expected within the genre. When I shot Last House, when you got shot or stabbed, you fell down dead. I just did the opposite: Somebody gets stabbed and they fall down but then the killer is ready to walk away and the person starts crawling. Nothing is as fast as it‘s supposed to be in a movie where people are supposed to die. That kinda started a whole different thing.
But it has to do with making people real, I think more than anything else. You can have a movie where you kill people by the billions and it will become like Stalin says: „One person dies and it‘s a tragedy. One million people die and it‘s a statistic.“ So it starts to lose the effectiveness unless you feel those are real people.
And just being different that anything else that people have seen before, also. We just killed somebody last night that way.
[laughter]
But literally I had a scene where somebody was going to be killed and it was described as, well, an incidence; he‘s pinned to a seat, he‘s in a car. That‘s it? That‘s what happens to a character I‘ve been watching for 45 minutes? So I just really ask myself, all the time, „Have I seen this before? If not, what would be really fascinating and different? And would it be something that I would want to see? Would it grip me? Make me scream, or laugh, or something like that.“
I think, bottom line, the advice I would give is don‘t duplicate what you‘ve seen before. That seems to be the primary mistake that young filmmaker‘s make. They‘ve seen every film in the world. I think one of the gifts that I had was that in a Church and a college that was very strict and it didn‘t allow seeing movies at all, so I didn‘t have any precedent. So, when I made movies, I didn‘t copy anything because I hadn‘t seen anything! [laughs] Certainly nothing in the genre. So you have to keep your head up and ask, „Have I seen this before and if I have, go someplace else. Do something different.“
Das ganze Gespräch könnt ihr hier nachlesen.
(80)
