What do you get when you combine satanic rituals, mean girls, and a marijuana farm plagued by a centuries-long curse? The result is an incredibly stressful weekend for Kassi (Romy Boloix), the protagonist of Stephen Garnett’s If She Screams. With the promise of a money-making opportunity, Kassi follows her friend to a weed farm up in the hills of Northern California, unaware of the darkness and depravity that awaits her. Along with her friend Christiana (Desma Triplett) and her enemy Marissa (Shelby Lyn), Kassi must overcome this shadowy terrain filled with backwoods barbarians, a sketchy weed grower who talks like Colonel Sanders, and a mysterious beast that is out for blood.
To its credit, If She Screams is gloriously gory and ruthlessly violent. It is also consistently funny — though I was unsure if this was intentional. While I can appreciate all manner of cringe, deliberate or otherwise, there were some choices made here — stylistically and narratively — that puzzled me. This story takes place during one harrowing weekend set in the present-day, while featuring flashbacks from 1800s California to establish the lore of these haunted hills. These scenes helped lay the groundwork for the conception of the film’s creature, but they also featured a nun with lip fillers so pronounced, she looked like she’d just come from a taping of the Real Housewives of Salem. This led me to the realization that, purposefully or not, If She Screams is entirely camp.
To make a story about a final girl and a cast of Deliverance-level bad guy bumpkins unique, campiness is always a good option. The dialogue, the performances, and the dose of feeble feminism were all packaged with a level of camp, though neither a wink nor a nudge was detected. The disjointed, albeit ambitious, script didn’t call for a ton of depth among characters, but instead focused its efforts upon the mythologizing of this wonderfully wicked creature, which single-handedly kept the energy and excitement of this film up. While echoing the themes of many other horror films that came before it, If She Screams still found a way to stand out — for better or for worse.
Upon finishing this film, I was not racked with fear, but overcome with lingering questions. How did Kassi and her friend Christiana come to meet? Why are they both so trusting of Marissa, whom they both clearly despise? Is there any significance to the man we see getting murdered in the opening scenes? What did they use for lip fillers in the 1800s? The answers to these questions were nowhere to be found, but in their place is a fun, freewheeling viewing experience with impressive special effects and a script that, if analyzed too closely, would simply ruin the amusement. If She Screams is not the scariest nor the most coherent movie I’ve seen this year, but it is certainly one that will stay with me.
