#even a movie i ADORE like SCREAM (1996) was not immune to this. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

james-stark-the-writer · 4 months

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started watching A Murder At The End of the World and i'm only like 4 minutes in rn but oh my fucking god, they already did the impossible, they made synthesizing a literal audience not only not annoying but actually intriguing and effective. holy shit.

#james talks #james watches stuff #a murder at the end of the world #if you're new here or have never consumed any media: synthesizing a literal audience is one of the most annoying things anything can do #it is at best distracting and at worst condescending and grating bc it assumes and assigns audience reactions and interpretations #and it also REEKS of a lack of faith in the material itself to be able to speak for itself #most of the time it's done for no real purpose and the few times it has a narrative purpose it's done awfully #even a movie i ADORE like SCREAM (1996) was not immune to this.#the one single flaw in that movie to me is Kenny repeating the 'behind you' joke. not only is it not funny the second time but it's—#synthesizing the audience by making the characters an audience to the same movie as us and telling us how we should be reacting.#another movie that tries to do this and fails miserably is like Halloween: Resurrection which tries to make some commentary—#on media as exploitative entertainment and the audience as willing participants and equally culpable in the continuation of trauma but the—#execution of it is absolutely horrible and that's even beyond how bad the rest of the movie is.#every time the characters are watching the same media or there's an actual audience in the media it's literally never gone well—#at least as far as i have experienced. but this is the first time a literal audience in anything has actually worked bc it's like—#right in the opening and it's the audience actually getting invested in the story so THAT audience responding the same way actually WORKS #actually borderline genius tbh

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