"Scream" - 15 years later, it's still the mother of all modern-day, MTV-generation slasher movies!

Rating: 10/10 (21 October 2011)

OK, here it is, finally, the mother of all modern-day, MTV-generation slashers: "Scream" is the popular 1996 slasher epic that single-handedly signaled the return of the slasher movie, and also single-handedly revitalized the sagging horror genre. But there was a twist: a large part of "Scream's" massive success had to deal with its open acknowledgment of its source material, lending the movie a level of self-awareness that had never been done before in horror (or at the very least, done very successfully).
The closest horror movies I can probably think of before then might have been "The Lost Boys" (1987), or maybe even "An American Werewolf in London" (1981). (And yes, I do realize there is a possibility that I could be wrong, but those are the only two I can immediately think of.)
The movie also represented a marriage of old and new: horror maestro Wes Craven ("A Nightmare on Elm Street," "The Hills Have Eyes," "The Last House on the Left," "Shocker," - to name a few), the man behind the camera of this wildly inventive slasher, was a seasoned professional in the horror genre at the time, yet his career at the point up until "Scream" seemed seriously lagging - despite the mild success of the reality-bending "New Nightmare" in 1994. Enter into the picture newbie screenwriter Kevin Williamson, whose inspired script for "Scream" took the lessons of past slasher flicks and injected a hip, knowing, mid-1990s cynicism and self-consciousness into the material that didn't ride the fine line into camp territory: the kids in this movie spoke and acted like they *knew* they were in a horror film. Together, these two gave us horror movie heaven - "Scream."
Despite the over-riding sense of self-knowing and movie-referencing humor, "Scream" is still edge-of-your-seat entertainment of the first order. It's a ludicrous premise that in theory should not work, but it does: the movie is still pretty damn scary (in addition to being gruesomely bloody and gory), even though all the characters are keenly aware of the "facts" of horror movies yet still knowingly break the rules established by the three godfathers of the slasher genre - the aforementioned "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (my personal favorite slasher movie), "Halloween" (1978), and "Friday the 13th" (1980).
The film's plot is deceptively simple: Somebody is taking their love of scary movies too far, and they're making a killing (pun intended). The classic opening double-murder sequence (featuring Drew Barrymore) sets the tone for the rest of the movie, and that is a non-stop roller coaster ride of thrills, chills, and laughs. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell, whose performance here officially ushered her into being the MTV generation's scream queen) leads an all-star cast of a slasher movie that also doubles as a brilliantly thrilling whodunit.
So whodunit? It obviously wasn't the ultra-feisty reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), nor was it Sidney's best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan) or Tatum's bumbling older brother, Deputy Dewey (David Arquette). Or was it one of them? Either way, other suspects include Sidney's boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich, whose character's name is an obvious reference to the late Donald Pleasance's Dr. Sam Loomis from ye old "Halloween"), Tatum's mentally deficient boy-toy Stu (Matthew Lillard), or was it the movie-loving uber-geek Randy (Jamie Kennedy)?
I've seen "Scream" countless times over the years, several of those times were in a high school graphic design class my sophomore year. I got into it around '99 or 2000, three or four years after the fact, but I loved it from the opening moments. Upon a refresher viewing today to mark the 15th anniversary of the film's release, I realize "Scream" has not lost of any its impact. But because "Scream" was the movie that revitalized the horror and slasher genres in a single dose, it didn't take long for imitators to follow its self-knowing, movie-referencing satirical formula, and some of those imitators include its three sequels (released in 1997, 2000 and 2011, respectively). (And how about those slasher movie parodies in the "Scary Movie" series? Isn't it ironic that "Scream" was initially titled "Scary Movie"?) It was a formula that worked once and only once.
Most famously, perhaps, "Scream" firmly established once and for all, the "rules" for surviving horror movies. Drum roll, Randy:
1) Sex = death,
2) No drinking or doing drugs, and
3) Never say, "I'll be right back" because you won't be.
15 years later, "Scream" is just as thrilling, entertaining, and funny as it was when I first saw it as an impressionable teenager in 1999 or 2000. Wes Craven has always had a way for directing scary movies with lively and three-dimensional characters, but "Scream" carried the revered horror master and his chief screenwriter into mainstream blockbuster territory, three more times, even.
(Yes, I loved - that's right, I said I loved "Scream 4"; it's the best and funniest since the original.)
10/10