Scream (1996)

*Spoilers for the Scream franchise*

With the 10th anniversary of Scream 4 coming up on April 15th, I thought now would be a better time than ever to rewatch and put out my reviews for my favourite franchise of all time, seeing as I stupidly missed the 25th anniversary of the original movie. I never really need an excuse to watch them, there’s always time for a scary movie.

Written by Kevin Williamson and directed by the great, late Wes Craven, Scream follows Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) through a series of new murders, a year after her own mother died of the same fate. She and her friends are terrorized by a killer who goes by the name of Ghostface who uses previous horror films as their inspiration, using phone calls to harass and quiz their victims on horror movie trivia, with their most famous question, “what’s your favourite scary movie?”

Scream opens with what may just be the most iconic slasher movie opening of all time, which ends in Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) hanging from a tree, with her insides on the outside. Ghostface calls her when she is home alone, making popcorn and about to put a movie on, and they begin quizzing her on movie trivia, after first making conversation to start the movie off. The killer taunts her through the phone and claims that she must answer a set of questions correctly in order to survive. You can guess that she doesn’t if her insides end up outside.

The day after Casey dies, the small town of Woodsboro erupts into a news coverage superstorm, with Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) taking center stage and trying to get the best story. We soon learn that Gale covered Sidney’s mother’s death the year prior and that her mother was murdered by the now prosecuted Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), and because of this, there is some bad blood between Sidney and Gail as Gail believe that Cotton was falsely prosecuted, with Sidney being adamant that he killed her as she saw him leave her house.

Soon after, and later in the night, Sidney is waiting at home for her friend Tatum (Rose McGowan) when she receives a phone call from the killer, leading to her being attacked when she hangs up on them because she thinks that it is Randy (Jamie Kennedy) calling her. She stupidly goes against what she has just said to the person on the other end of the phone, “some stupid killer stalking some big breasted girl who can’t act and is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door, it’s insulting.” So what does she do when she’s attacked? She runs up the stairs instead of running out the front door. It’s insulting, really.

After being attacked, she is met by Billy, (Skeet Ulrich) her boyfriend, but he drops a phone from his pocket, making Sidney suspect that he was the one on the other end of the phone. Billy tells her that he couldn’t have been as he was the one who scared them off when they saw him coming, which is just suspicious if you ask me. This leads to him being arrested by Deputy Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and spending the night in custody.

He is soon released, though, and the murders have caused a curfew to be put in place, but school kids only see this as an excuse to party and get drunk, which is when Stu (Matthew Lillard), Tatum’s boyfriend, decides to throw a party, which is where things start to get serious. The party leads to two, well three, new deaths, Tatum in the garage and Kenny, Gale’s cameraman. Sidney and Billy finally sleep together but Sidney still has her suspicions, and this is when Billy is attacked by the killer, stabbed in the chest, and Sidney is able to make a get away.

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We later find out that Billy didn’t actually die, and that he is in fact the killer, alongside Stu. They reveal that they were the ones who killed Sidney’s mother the year before as she and Billy’s dad were having an affair, causing Billy’s mother to abandon him, and that was his motive to start killing again on the anniversary of her death. It ends with both of them ultimately dying, with Stu’s head being crushed by a TV (or did he though!?) and Billy being shot in the head, as that’s the rule, the killer always comes back for one final scare, so shooting them through the head is the only option.

It’s safe to say that this movie is my all time number one favourite, and that will never change, no matter how many movies I watch. There are so many references to past horror movies, and there always seems to be something new that I pick up on whenever I watch it. This movie seemed to revitalise the horror genre, and create new expectations for movies to follow in it’s footsteps. I don’t think that there is a bad word I could say about this movie.

Wes Craven has done such a good job in directing this movie, and I am upset that he won’t be the one directing the fifth installment, so I can’t wait to see how the new directors pay up, and see if they do Craven the justice they wished to. There are some really appealing scenes throughout this movie, even though it is a horror and you don’t expect a horror to be visually pleasing.

All of the actors in this movie are such good actors, and Neve Campbell does an amazing job at playing our final girl, and I can’t even begin to describe Matthew Lillard’s performance. I love him on and off screen, I love him just as much in the Scooby Doo movies, and I won’t accept any slander. He plays such a good psychopath in this movie, and I definitely think that he survived the TV to the head, but that’s a theory for a whole other post that I’d love to write.

There is so much I could say about this movie, and the franchise in general, but I fear that the post will be far too long, so I’ll be saving that for a post coming in the future about postmodernism in the film.

If you haven’t already, please watch this film. It’s amazing. Don’t so it for me, do it for yourself and thank me later.

This film’s fixation: Matthew Lillard ❤