Scream (1996)

★★★½
Scream was the perfect storm that made landfall at the right time when it was needed the most. By 1996, the big three horror franchises of the '80s were finished. Freddy was dead, Jason went to Hell and Michael had one last shot at relevance with 1995's dreadful Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers before his series ran out of gas. There were still notable horror movies in the first half of the '90s (Candyman, Body Snatchers), but the outlook for the slasher movie genre looked bleak. It was just as well. Most were just obvious cash grabs with little to offer beyond what had already been done better by John Carpenter and Wes Craven. It would be Craven himself who saw an opportunity to reflect on the genre and toy with its conventions in his 1994 feature Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but its low box office haul showed that something was missing to make this kind of movie appealing again.

Enter writer Kevin Williamson, who together with Craven crafted a movie that combined the self-awareness of New Nightmare with a cast of characters that understands the genre and displays various attitudes towards it. Scream presents a slasher scenario with all the usual tropes found in such movies (empty hallways, mysterious noises, characters who investigate said noises, victims being chased by a masked killer, etc.), but the twist this time is that we have knowledgeable teenagers who have seen lots of horror movies, and they can use that familiarity to their advantage. The suspense comes from how they use that knowledge. I liked a scene in which series heroine Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) mocked onscreen teenagers who run up the stairs when they should run out the front door, but then she finds herself running up the stairs to escape her attacker because the front door wasn't an option. It isn't that easy after all.

The movie's opening sequence is a masterpiece of acting and building suspense. High school student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is alone at home when she receives a strange call that starts out innocent enough but then turns sinister when the caller starts making threats. Casey slowly breaks down as her tormentor raises the stakes to keep her on the phone. The tension escalates. In a matter of minutes, Casey's perfect world comes crashing down. The fact that Drew Barrymore played this role is not insignificant. The actress was featured prominently on the movie's poster and trailers. She was the big name cast member who hailed from an acting family that stretches back decades and even centuries if you backtrack far enough. Her early scenes disrupt any expectations we may have for this new breed of slasher movie in which nothing can be taken for granted.

I was already familiar with Neve Campbell, who starred in the television drama Party of Five at the time and appeared in The Craft from earlier in 1996. She is the true backbone of the movie. There is a theory that the final girl in slashers is a virgin, though I've seen enough of these to know that sexual experience varies. Nevertheless, Williamson runs with the idea, and Campbell imbues Sidney with the innocence that the script requires. Her friends are horror fanatics who drop movie titles whenever the situation calls for it. Her best friend is Tatum, played by Rose McGowan, whom I recognized from The Doom Generation. She's much pluckier than Sidney, but she's also very protective of her. Sidney's most interesting friend is Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who works at the local video store and possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies. In a standout scene, he educates his fellow party attendees on the rules for surviving a horror movie.

Casey Becker's killer turns his sights on Sidney. He harasses her and appears in unexpected places. The killer, called Ghostface, becomes a media sensation. Reporters descend upon the sleepy town of Woodsboro to cover the story. One of them is Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who has history with Sidney after she covered both her mother's death and the subsequent conviction of her murderer, Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber). Sidney's testimony put him on death row, although Gale isn't convinced of his guilt and even wrote a book about it, much to Sidney's chagrin. Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) is Sidney's patient boyfriend who desires more connection but also understands her hesitance. His buddy is the hyperactive Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard, who improvised some of his lines to hilarious effect).

Scream places these teens against the backdrop of a town terrorized by Ghostface. Classes are canceled until further notice, and the sheriff implements a curfew. The climax takes place at Stu's house, where the body count rises, and the identity of Ghostface is eventually revealed. While all this plays out, Williamson and Craven tease us with our own knowledge of horror movies and either confirm our expectations or shake things up to keep us guessing. This approach results in a fresh take on the slasher film with characters of above average intelligence navigating a plot featuring mystery and murder. Scream's success was highly influential. For the rest of the decade and into the new millennium, the creative juices started flowing, and a deluge of horror movies poured out of the cauldron. Even Michael Myers got another shot to re-establish himself with the admirable Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in 1998.

Scream delivers the goods. It's suspenseful, gory in all the right amounts, humorous without cheapening the violence and smart in the way the characters handle their situation. Williamson takes care not to make his characters too smart, though. They're in high school after all, so there is still a tendency to act immature in the face of a threat. Ghostface pranksters run around the halls gleefully to draw attention to themselves, and even some of Sidney's friends appear overly interested in the bloody details of Casey's death. Laughter can act as a barrier to horrifying imagery, because the occasional bystander would rather not face it. (I've heard of people laughing at The Exorcist.) Battles were fought behind the scenes to bring Williamson's vision to the big screen. Wes Craven believed in the project and pressed onward despite overbearing executives (like Harvey Weinstein, no surprise there) applying pressure from above. Craven knew what he was doing, and it shows here in one of his best works.

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