The undisputed king of the '90s slasher

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2016)

Single-handedly breathing life into the dead teen genre (read that as you will), SCREAM was a box office hit to be reckoned with. Rave reviews at the time meant that it was the 1990s' most popular horror film, but it's easy to get caught up in the hype of something. On my first viewing I agreed that it was an excellent film. Now, a few years later when we're all a little older and a little wiser, it's time for a second look. Especially after the glut of teen slashers following in SCREAM's wake diluted the originality and freshness of it.
Happily, SCREAM is still enjoyable the second or third time around, although I have my doubts as to the long-term appeal of the film. Much of the interest lies in the murder mystery side of the film, and of course after you've seen it once you know who the killers are. Aside from this niggle, SCREAM has everything you could want from a slasher film: great colourful photography, lots of blood, plenty of plot twists, bizarre gory deaths, and some likable characters. Add on top of that the (now clichéd) self-referential twist which had the then-new idea of characters in a horror film actually talking about characters in previous horror films with plenty of in-jokes, and this is a delightful viewing experience.
The characters here are well drawn and a talented young cast do very well with their respective roles. Neve Campbell is young and cute here, likable as the film's heroine, and a long way from the hollowed-out zombie she had turned into four years later (watching this again, it's amazing how much she changed in so little a time). David Arquette is still irritating as the dumb sheriff, yet Courteney Cox provides tough charm in the showy role of a television reporter. Drew Barrymore, whose familial links to the horror film go back to the 1920s, has a brilliant cameo and is convincingly terrified at the beginning of the film, in the now legendary telephone sequence which sees her a) menaced by a prank caller, b) take part in a horror trivia game and lose, c) see her boyfriend gutted, d) get stalked through her house by the killer, and finally e) get stabbed repeatedly, gutted, and hanged from a tree. Now there's something you don't see everyday.
Elsewhere, Matthew Lillard walks a fine line between being annoying and amusing, falling just on the right side of amusing, while Skeet Ulrich lends quite a powerful presence to things in his Jack Nicholson-wannabe performance. Cameos from people like Henry Winkler to Linda Blair just serve to spice things up. Visually speaking, the white-masked, black-cloaked killer is startling and spooky in equal measures, and certainly one of the best-looking masked villains in movie history. Liberal use is made of blood and gore in some very-painful looking stabbings, while other weird deaths add to the fun.
Yet the film really comes into its own during a party where HALLOWEEN plays on television. Randy, a character who himself is a horror movie addict, spells out the "rules" of the genre to his fellow party-goers and the audience at the same time, and the rest of the film is happy to break these "rules" as many times as possible. As well as all this, there are a few genuinely suspenseful stalking sequences and a delightful 'Grand Guignol' style finale which has blood spilling everywhere. All this serves to make SCREAM the undisputed king of the '90s slasher.