Scream

Rating: 7/10 (2 July 2014)

Title: Scream
Directed by: Wes Craven
Storyline: The beginning starts off with a random man calling up a random girl and asking if she likes scary movies. This type of scene can go wrong very quickly or even just fall flat if not done correctly, but this movie makes it turn from a comical little chat into something more with the words "I want to know who I'm looking at" along with the sudden drop in the music. The man on the phone gets more violent with the fact of him knowing what she looks like, with all things adding up to make her more frightened while still adding suspense to the opening scene. You will also see that Scream made the "I want to play a game" line a lot more sinister for its time before it was used by the Saw franchise. The level of psychological torture that the man puts her through in the first scene is made all the more haunting by his monotone voice. Along with the woman actually sounding scared for her life and the life of her boyfriend and not like she is trying to sound scared for the camera. Which is more than what can be said for the parents. After the first scene we are introduced to two more teens, the main characters of this movie, who seem to have a relationship of sorts. We are then shown the high school that the girl from the first scene goes to as well the main girl. Afterward, we are introduced to the bunch of friends who we will be watching for this movie, one of which is called Stuart who is played by Matthew Lillard. This is a character I cannot take seriously, mainly because he also played and does the voice of Shaggy Rogers from the Scooby Doo movies. Our main character Sidney is left home alone because her father has gone away on a trip, so Sidney goes over to stay at a friends house. In a real world situation, this is actually a very smart thing to do under the logic of safety in numbers. Ghostface finds were she is and starts attacking her when she goes back inside, but runs off when her boyfriend comes, naturally she adds two and two together and suspects he's the killer, he gets arrested and she goes with her friend. But even at her friends house she still gets the man calling her with her boyfriend held in custody. Soon after getting attacked in school, Sidney goes to her friends to watch a movie feeling it would be safe there. There also is a subtle reference in the school with Frank the cleaner being dressed like Freddy Kruger. This is in the same scene where the camera is focusing on the headmaster walking around the school after hours. You can tell he is going to be attack and/or killed because he is not even a secondary character and is getting screen time. Because of all the murders people are jumping at all sorts of conclusions of who is the killer, this also instigates a town wide curfew. Ghostface appears at the party and his first kill is a creative one, he uses a garage to break someones neck. While Sidney is being romantic with her boyfriend upstairs, the rest of them are watching the horror movies downstairs, this is when we are introduced to the rules of how to survive a horror movie. They also get a call about the headmaster being found dead, this is a smart little plot device to get rid of the excess people in the house, shows how morbid those people are but it is believable. From there on it is just different ways to kill all of the different people. But it then turns out that Billy is the killer, who faked his death, but he's not the only killer, the twist is that there are two killers Billy and Stuart. But as expected they die in the end and Sidney lives on to do sequels.
Acting: The acting of the main characters is solid, Neve Campbell plays the surviving Sidney, she adds a sense of reality to the main character who seems shy mostly. Skeet Ulrich plays Billy the brains of the murders, apart from mistaking him for Leonardo Dicaprio several times due to the way he looks he was a great actor and adds an unnerving sense of psycho into it. The secondary characters are good and actually feel like typical teenagers for the most part, apart from that there isn't really all too much to say about it, I admire that the movie didn't take itself all that seriously and that they were able to avoid being really cheesy at scenes that could have been cheesy.
Noticeable Camera work: The panning and tilting shots were used effectively, wasn't to keen on the times where the camera jump zoomed, these were rare but still noticeable. We were treated to voyeuristic shots as well which worked well for the overall feel along with being a plot device.
Costume: Not much to say about the costume, sort of inventive. Not much else.
Length: 110 minutes
Overall Feel: I enjoyed this movie overall, I was bored by the romantic scenes between Sidney and Billy after the first time we were introduced. The rest of the film created a dramatic and tense atmosphere, but when it cut to the romance I felt the suspense drop and was actually wishing them for to hurry up and get stabbed so we could go back to the main group watching movies downstairs. Apart from the pacing of the movie, everything else was OK. The story was pretty solid, no real plot holes that stood out. It was a good classic horror movie, simple as.