Scream, Wolf Children

Scream

The first thing I notice about Scream is how 90s it is. I think it’s because it’s about teenagers, who are I guess the trendiest group of people. There are bad hairstyles everywhere; curtains, too much gel and those thin fringes girls used to have. I love it because it reminds me of being a kid, watching stuff like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the show) and the Kerrang! music channel circa 2000. It’s a horror comedy, but it’s not that funny or scary. The opening scene is the scariest thing in it; Drew Barrymore’s acting – reacting is fantastic. The funniest parts for me aren’t the references to other horror films because I’m not a huge horror fan and they’re heavy handed; characters just talk about other movies, which may have been smart 19 years ago but I find it pretentious and embarrassing. What I do find funny is Mathew Lillard who later went on to play Shaggy in the Scooby Doo movies and cartoons in a role he was seemingly born to play. He’s an over the top ‘90s high school dude in this, all hair gel and beads.  Kind of like Corey Feldman in The ‘Burbs or Poochie, but horny He’s awesome. 

Wolf Children

Wolf Children is an award-winning Japanese animation about a single mum who has to raise two kids who are werewolves. They’re not the bad kind; they don’t eat people and there’s no full moon stuff, they just turn into wolves when they feel like it. So the mum moves out of the city to live out in a big house in the countryside so her kids can be free to run around and be wolves. It’s quite a low-key story, it takes place over 12 years or so as you see the kids grow up. What I liked about it was you have so much time with this family, you really feel like you get to know them. Not that they’re particularly deep characters, you just feel like you’ve been intimate with them for a long time. The story is so simple I don't know why it's so captivating. I guess like most anime it's just so different to what we're used to in the west. It reminded me of Studio Ghibli, I guess partly because I don't have many reference points for anime, though the animation, the high saturation and the piano lead orchestral score very much reminded me of something like Spirited Away. The storytelling is different though, less magical and confusing and I think more accessible to western audiences. It's a sweet, beautiful movie.