Editorials
Happy 20th Anniversary to ‘Copycat!’
October 27th brings us the 20th anniversary of the oft-forgotten thriller* Copycat, starring Sigourney Weaver, Holly Hunter, Dermot Mulroney and Harry Connick, Jr. Released in 1995 at the tail-end of copycats (sorry) of The Silence of the Lambs, Copycat tends to slip by in discussions of great serial killer thrillers, since Scream would come out a year later and overshadow most 90s slashers that came before it. Not that Copycat is necessarily a slasher, but you’re more likely to find someone who has never heard of Copycat over someone who has never heard of Scream of The Silence of the Lambs, and that’s just not right.
*Before you cry “But Copycat isn’t a horror film,” please allow me to direct you to Jonathan’s post right here. If The Silence of the Lambs can be considered horror, so can Copycat.
***SPOILERS of a 20-year-old film to follow***
In Copycat, an attack by serial killer Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick, Jr.) renders renowned criminal psychologist Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver) an agoraphobic. Thirteen months after the attack, a different serial killer begins to copycat some of the most notorious serial killers of the century. With the help of Inspector M.J. Monahan (Holly Hunter) and her partner Reuben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney), they work together to track the copycat before he can kill more people.
What makes Copycat such a special film is that unlike so many other films in the genre, it avoids gender stereotypes. The women are the stars of the show and they are capable of taking care of themselves. Even Weaver’s character, who is relegated to her apartment for 90% of the film, is portrayed as a strong female, despite her handicap.
Copycat’s parallels with The Silence of the Lambs are apparent. In Copycat, Monahan but use the help of an incarcerated expert on criminals and psychopaths (Weaver) to help her solve a crime, just as Clarice Starling had to utilize the help of Hannibal Lecter. Copycat’s twist on this plot is to have the incarcerated intellectual be female and not a criminal. Monahan is also a seasoned police inspector compared to the rookie Clarice Starling. To my knowledge (and I could be wrong), this is the first film to feature two women law enforcement officers working together to take down the villain. Dermot Mulroney’s Goetz is the sidekick and rookie in this film, and he gets killed at the end of the second act by a random criminal in the police station.
The Silence of the Lambs isn’t the only film that influenced Copycat. Wait Until Dark, the 1967 Audrey Hepburn thriller in which she is confined to her apartment because of her blindness. Helen’s agoraphobia directly parallels Hepburn’s character’s vision impairment.
Copycat was a type of feminist movie that no one had ever seen before, which makes it unfathomable that it isn’t name-dropped in film discussions more often. Its influence can be seen even in films like The Heat. Hell, the film even has a gay character whose sexual orientationis barely mentioned, which isn’t even something that’s common in films that are released today.
While the feminist ideals and the chemistry between the two leads is a major selling point of Copycat, the film has so much more going for it. Directed by John Amiel (who would go on to direct critical darlings Entrapment and The Core), Copycat features stella performances from everyone in the cast. Connick, Jr. has never been creepier, Mulroney is great as the junior detective and even William McNamara plays a great villain you love to hate.
Part of the fun of Copycat is the crime scenes. Watching the film plays like a “Greatest Hits” edition of America’s most notorious serial killers. From The Boston Strangler to Son of Sam to Ted Bundy, Copycat hits all the major players. While it is very much a cop movie, the film features the psychological elements much more prominently, making it a more compelling film.
There are disturbing moments aplenty in the film (though nothing particularly gory), the primary one being the opening sequence of Connick’s attack on Weaver, but there are severed fingers left in books, ants set loose in a bed, a really creepy animated email video and the climactic showdown between Helen and the titular copycat. Twists and turns feature prominently in Copycat, but the fun comes from watching Helen and M.J. piece together the clues to determine the killer’s pattern (the reveal is particularly clever).
Of course, Copycat is not a perfect film. Despite the aforementioned twists and turns, the overall narrative arc is pretty predictable (Helen must eventually face her agoraphobia head-on) and the twist in the final scene, while creepy, isn’t wholly necessary (and is a tease for a sequel that never came to fruition).
That being said, Copycat is still one of the more underrated thrillers of the 90s that should find its way back into popular culture. It did moderately well at the box office, making $32 million on a $20 million budget, so clearly some people have seen it. Give it a re-watch (or watch it for the first time) this week to celebrate its 20th anniversary!
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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