Triskaidekaphilia: 'Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th' (2000)

On the 13th of each month, I write about a movie whose title contains the number 13.

It's probably not a good sign when the best way to identify your film would be as "the poor man's Scary Movie." Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th was released direct to video a few months after the first movie in the alarmingly successful horror-movie parody series, and while Scary Movie has spawned four sequels and is apparently beloved by many, Shriek has been justifiably forgotten. As far as quickie spoofs go, Shriek is at least more structurally sound than movies like the works of infamous duo Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, and the filmmakers (writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms, director John Blanchard) have a decent grasp on their most obvious targets (Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer). The opening scene is a fairly impressive re-creation of the opening scene from Scream; the only problem is that none of its jokes are remotely funny. At times it's not even clear what the jokes are meant to be.

That problem pervades the generally laugh-free movie, which, like Scream, takes place in a small town menaced by a hooded and masked killer. Obviously plotting isn't a major concern in a spoof, but Shriek is so listless that the incoherent plot ends up dragging it down, and the requirements of a parody mean that the filmmakers have to include large chunks of plot from both Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. There are also the requisite references to other horror movies (including Child's Play, Halloween and, of course, Friday the 13th), as well as an inordinate fixation on Dawson's Creek, which extends to naming one of the characters Dawson Deery (a play on Dawson Leery), even though he does nothing at all that's reminiscent of the character he's named for. There is exactly one clever idea in the movie, a brief bit about the characters being aware that they're in a parody (much like the characters in Scream are aware of the rules of horror movies), which might have made for some successfully self-aware commentary on self-awareness, but it disappears as quickly as any of the other half-formed comedic riffs.

The cast is a who's-who of people who needed money at the end of the '90s, including Tiffani Thiessen, Tom Arnold, Simon Rex, Coolio, Heather Graham's sister Aimee, Artie Lange and, uh, Shirley Jones. Buffy the Vampire Slayer recurring players Julie Benz and Danny Strong (now an Emmy-winning writer) play two of the main characters, and while Benz actually comes off fairly well, Strong radiates desperation as the nerdy virgin character (who ends up in a running, half-assed American Pie parody). The producers seem to have spent most of their money on casting, because the movie's aesthetic is grubby and cheap, with limited sets and fake-looking special effects. The art of filmmaking is even less of a concern than plot mechanics in a movie like this, but the lack of style and grace speaks to how little anyone involved seems to care about the finished product.