- Title: Scream (1996)
- IMDb: link
The brainchild of Kevin Williamson, 1996’s Scream enjoyed playing with the concepts of a classic slasher flick often satirizing them when still using them to tell the story of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends dealing with a serial killer in a Halloween costume murdering their way through their small California town. Director Wes Craven hits the right notes to stage and sell the concept for maximum effect while the characters often remark on the various aspects of horror movies culminating in the movie-obsessed Randy (Jamie Kennedy) summarizing rules which the franchise would live by for decades to come.
Along with Sidney and Randy, our main characters include her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich), her best-friend Tatum (Rose McGowan) and her boyfriend Stuart (Matthew Lillard), Tatum’s brother Dewey (David Arquette) the awkward Sheriff’s Deputy, and local reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) out for her big break who has history with Sidney in covering her mother’s murder one year before. Our other character of note is Ghostface (Roger Jackson) who shows up throughout the film chasing and stabbing his victims with a knife, often after taunting them over the phone starting with Drew Barrymore in the film’s opening sequence which sets up the film’s mix of comedy and horror.
Smartly playing with the concepts, and featuring a ton of references to other horror movies, Scream has always worked well for me up until its reveal and extended final sequence which simply lasts too long (even giving it some slack for parodying horror movies drawing out the ending). It’s a problem across most of the franchise where the reveal is never as interesting (especially given some of the questionable motivations we’re given for the various kill sprees) as the nameless killer in the mask. While it doesn’t ruin the film, it certainly ends things on an unfortunate down note. An immediate success, despite being released during the holidays, a sequel was greenlit while the film was still in theaters retuning the core characters for more slasher mayhem one year later.
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