Copycat
Director: Charlie Shackleton
Writer: Charlie Shackleton
Seen on: 29.9.2024

“Plot”:
In 1991, There’s Nothing Out There by Rolfe Kanefsky hit the horror movie circuit. A student project, probably the first self-referential horror movie, started to see some success – only to be eclipsed just a few years later by the first Scream movie. Copycat tries to trace this history, wondering how much Scream stole from There’s Nothing Out There.

Copycat is a short documentary giving us Kanefsky’s perspective that comes with a certain bitterness for the lack of recognition he has gotten for his work and his idea. It can also establish a rather direct connection from Kanefsky to Wes Craven, so I can understand that bitterness. Had the documentary been long, it would have been worth it to delve more deeply into the questions around auteurship, and idea ownership, but since it is just a few minutes long, it’s nice addition to the original film, giving us a bit of background on the film’s reception and history.