Scream (1996)

Let’s start off with a classic slasher that just so happens to turn thirty this year: 1996s Scream. This is the original brainchild of director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson that launched one of the most successful horror franchises of the last three decades, and also one of the highest quality for both fans and critics. For those who actually haven’t seen this one yet, the story follows Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) who is being stalked by a killer in a Ghostface costume one year after her mother was murdered. The cast include Sydney’s best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan), her brother deputy Dewey Riley(David Arquette), her boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), Tatum’s boyfriend Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), and mutual friend Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy). Also appearing is Top Story reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) who is writing a book about the previous murder of Sydney’s mother.

From the perspective of an old school horror fan, this slasher really has it all. The tension builds from the very first scene, were teen Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is being terrorized by an unknown caller quizzing her about scary movies, and never really lets up from there. The kills are realistic, but not too gory or cringe inducing. The cast give surprisingly strong performances for this type of movie. But the real standout here is the superior writing. Scream is the first mainstream slasher to really capitalize on its self awareness as a horror movie (a trait that has come to be known as being “meta”), with the characters constantly referencing previous horror movies, especially slasher movie elements. This technique is used particularly well as a plot device, because the audience is reminded of the usual slasher conventions of movies from the 1980s while playing with them and subverting them at key junctures. In fact the writing is so entertaining that the usual exploitative features such as gratuitous nudity and sex scenes (which are kept to a minimum here) really aren’t missed.

Overall, I’m going to have to give Scream a grade of A+. I would highly recommend it for an age appropriate audience (teens and above).