"So, how does it feel to be almost brutally butchered?" A classic already.

Rating: 8/10 (3 September 2005)

Scream starts with Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) receiving a phone call which she puts down to a wrong number, however the caller keeps ringing her back each time becoming increasingly hostile & threatening. It's not long before Casey finds out that her boyfriend Steven Orth (Kevin Patrick Walls) has been gutted & she is next... The news of the double murder quickly spreads through the small American town of Woodsboro as Sheriff Burke (Joseph Whipp) concentrates his investigations at the local high school questioning all the pupils, including Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) whose Mother was brutally raped & murdered a year earlier. Later that night as Sidney waits for her friend Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) to pick her up she too receives a phone call from the ghost masked killer & is attacked but her boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) conveniently shows up just in time. Reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) sense a big story & starts to hassle Sidney while Tatum's Brother Deputy 'Dewey' (David Arquette) takes it upon himself to look out for Sidney. As the mystery deepens with Sidney's Father going missing & Sidney unsure of who to trust Tatum's boyfriend Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard) organises a party with lots of potential teenage victims for the serial killer...
Directed by Wes Craven who also has a small cameo as the Freddy Krueger inspired janitor, Scream is the horror film that made the genre popular again, the film which so many have tried to copy since. A fine film it is too. The script by Kevin Williamson plays around with all the slasher film clichés in a witty self referential sort of way. Scream is bursting at the seams with all the horror film in-jokes & homages, most people could probably watch Scream two or three times & still not spot them all. Like the horror film lover character Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) who knows all the traditional slasher rules & plays them to the hilt like if your a virgin in a horror film you die. The dialogue also pokes fun at the genre in an affectionate way like when the killer mentions going outside by oneself to investigate a strange noise as being stupid! It's great fun for horror fans, like myself, to try & spot all the references & mentions other classic horrors get. I thought the mystery element was great, Scream has plenty of red herrings & I was never sure who the killer was right up until the final effective reveal which is quite clever although the motive behind the murders is somewhat shallow & hardly surprising. I thought Scream dragged a little from after Casey was murdered for the next 40 odd minutes as no one dies at all, this witty & hip dialogue is all well & good to entertain up to a point but I would have liked a little more action as well. Technically Scream is as good as one could hope for on a relatively small $15,000,000 budget, director Craven creates some good set pieces & effective sequences especially the opening, the cinematography is very good, the music incorporates horror themes into itself particularly Halloween (1978) & as a whole Scream has that Hollywood polish about it. The violence & gore is restrained, a few stabbings & shootings plus Steven's guts spilling out at the start is about it, a little disappointing actually. The young attractive cast do a good job, Campbell makes for a likable enough 'scream queen' for the 90's & Ulrich is great & has a cold emotionless look on occasion that coupled with is boyish good looks you are never quite sure if he's telling the truth or not, Arquette makes for a suitably goofy deputy & Cox is perfectly cast as the bitchy reporter, in reality after meeting each other on Scream Arquette & Cox later married. The sequel Sream 2 (1997) reunites all the surviving cast members & is also well worth watching if you enjoyed this. Overall Scream is a great horror film that has to some extent reinvented the genre & just about deserves it's already classic status although I have slight reservations about it's slow pace at times which is my only complaint with it as a whole. An absolute must for horror fans & definitely worth a watch for more general audiences too although some of the horror film humour may pass you by. Still, highly recommend!