An entertaining thriller from the good Wes Craven.

Rating: Null/10 (28 March 2002)

There are a lot of reasons to hate this film, the most abundant one being that this movie inspired other movies like it to follow in its footsteps. However, this was the one that started it all, and although it can be annoying when you look back and see all the material that has been copied from it film after film, it stands alone. This is NOT a horror movie. I don't even know if you could call it a slasher, really. It's basically an entertaining mystery/thriller with gore. A sort of "Friday the 13th" meets "Scooby-Doo" detective story -- with teens. The dialogue was cool at the time (1996) and refreshing compared to the sometimes banal dialogue of others before it, but Williamson's script is a little too full of it and dependent on it. This film is notorious for its self-awareness -- the would-be victims have seen the movies we love and have learned a few tips from them. This is of course an original idea, but it takes something away from the atmosphere (who wants hip characters who fight back at the killer and make him look stupid!?). The film tries to be too hip and refreshing that sometimes it loses itself in its own overdone effort to reinvent a dying genre. And a little tip to Williamson: if you want to revive the horror movie genre, don't make a self-depricating parody of it! But overall the real kudos here go to director Craven. He took an okay script and made it into a good thrill-ride worth viewing. I have to hand it to him, what he did with this much overrated material is brilliant -- the opening sequence with Drew Barrymore is stuff made in movie history. And he doesn't cut back on the blood and gore, which is nice because it makes the film more shocking (most mysteries aren't concerned with horror movie tactics). And the killer is pretty damn difficult to guess. Thank God for unpredictability. The only thing the film needed more of, sparing the opening, was real suspense. From the end of the opening on, Craven shifts into overdrive and delivers the movie with shock after shock and good set-pieces with the phone-pranking killer, but he doesn't generate any true suspense. And how scary is an idiot who's most likely a high school student prancing around in a lame ghost costume that, I'm sorry, wouldn't even be scary enough for Halloween night? The costume plain sucks. And what's with all the characters kicking the killer's ass? At one point the killer is slammed with a door, kicked in the head, clubbed with beer bottles, and tripped! Not to mention that he or she always lets the victim get away at first (if he's seen so many horror films, shouldn't he be a little more competent?). Exactly how dangerous is this guy...? Overall, this film is not standard horror and is probably the only scary film between 1996 and 2002 that you should bother seeing, the others in between are all the same. I love the horror/slasher genre like the '80s films and those of the great master Dario Argento and Craven creates a nice outing here. He is a talented director, no one else could have done what he did with Williamson's material. Scary at points, and a great mystery that holds you from start to finish. But this film does make all my favorite (excuse me if they are not Oscar worthy) horror movies look trashy. A movie is supposed to be entertaining, and slashers are. Watch them for fun! And while "Scream" wastes a lot of time laughing and griping at the horror films that have gone before it, there are a few things it can work on, too -- don't try too hard.