Taking My Love of Movie Reviews One Step Too Far

Rating: 10/10 (15 May 2015)

I first watched this as a teenager and was blown away by the first ten minutes, and after the impressive opening of this film, was kept hooked and entertained the whole way through. The first frame through to the last showcases, despite a few flaws, what an almost flawlessly perfect horror movie looks like. Scream is well known by now for revitalising a dead genre, and in doing so, created its own, and burrowed its way deep into my subconscious that I screamed out in agony when they not only screwed up Scream 4, but flat out denied us the promised Scream 5 and 6.
Keeping this review Spoiler-free is hard considering it's the type of movie where twists and turns and red herrings is what keeps it entertaining. It's the type of film where you have this one conversation with yourself the whole way through: "he's the killer. No. He's the killer. No. He's the killer. No. He's the killer." I never guessed the killer.
Kevin Williamson has always been one of my favourite writers and ideas man (when he's writing films and not crappy television shows), and Scream shows him at his best. Wes Craven has an uncanny knack of creating memorable icons. It must have been his destiny to scar people's brains with terror-ific, unforgettable images. As a child he probably sat in bed thinking: "How do I make other people not be able to sleep at night?" Neve Campbell is the perfect scream queen, marred only by the fact she won't do nudity.
Marco Beltrami's Scream score is still one of his best musical works to this day. Nothing he has done since Scream and two of its sequels has ever come close in brilliance to the unique sound he created for this and those films.
This movie truly is a Scream and I gave it, at a time when the internet wasn't really around that much, the greatest word of mouth ever. I still enjoy sitting down with people who haven't had the pleasure of watching it and seeing their reactions for the first time.
It's most certainly a Screamer.