Scream and scream again and again!

Rating: 7/10 (13 October 2009)

It's been more than a decade since I last watched "Scream" – probably right after it got released in theaters or something – and honestly have to admit I never was a big fan of this much-hyped blockbuster. To me personally (admittedly I was just an over-enthusiast horror fanatic who just started to find his way around the genre) it was simply a mockery against really unsettling movies and the one film that suddenly turned everyone into a horror buff overnight. Also, and maybe even most importantly, "Scream" was single-handedly responsible for a massive overload of inferior and sometimes even downright retarded knock-offs, imitations, zero-budgeted amateur trash slasher flicks. Suddenly and thanks to the simplistic concept of this movie, everyone considered him/herself capable of making a horror movie and sadly enough most of them even found ways of distribution as well. This was my personal blunt opinion on "Scream" more than ten years ago. By now, I still think it's a vastly overrated movie and definitely not the best horror film of the nineties (my vote for that either goes to "Braindead" or "Candyman"), but my opinions regarding the actual film's quality surely have changed. "Scream", and particularly Kevin Williamson's screenplay, is very clever and witty in its observations on the contemporary teen pop culture and it covers a pretty impressive range of old horror trivia. Wes Craven, who in his career alternatively tackled some hits ("The Hills have Eyes", "Deadly Blessing", "Nightmare on Elm Streeet") and some misses ("Shocker", "Vampire in Brooklyn") was the ideal choice of director for a film that simultaneously spoofs and pays tribute to a popular film genre that thrives on clichés, stereotypes and gratuitous scares. Last but certainly not least, the actual story offers a handful of genuinely uncanny moments as well as some neat unpredictable twists. Simply the opening sequence starring Drew Barrymore already – which I suppose everybody knows about by now – is enough indication that anything can happen to any disposable character in this film. The premise is rudimentary and ancient, with a spooky masked killer terrorizing a small high school and particularly one girl whose mum got massacred one year earlier, but that's all there is necessary. Good performances, tight direction, classy photography, dazzling soundtrack and a truckload of nauseating murder set pieces do the rest. Recommended for all type of horror-appreciating audiences.