Wes Craven's magnum opus

Rating: 9/10 (13 May 2007)

With "Scream", Wes Craven who before this had left a chain of horror flicks gave to the horror genre one of its proudest kingpins and a valuable reference which gave a new lease of life to the slasher genre which thrived in the eighties. But also a film which involuntarily became an accursed one since it prompted many fragile teenagers to kill their families or friends dressed in the killer's outfit.
Wes Craven exploits the indispensable ingredients pertaining to the serial killer story like a female teenager all alone in her house who is about to watch a horror flick and receives ominous phone calls or teenagers all gathered in a house watching horror flicks and they're all killed one after the other and the filmmaker follows the rules of the game while poring over them. During 110 minutes, Craven mixes the slasher movie and a studied reflection about the genre and its premises. Hence its indisputable strength. Flicks like the "Freddy" or "Friday the 13th" endless saga contributed to the fame of the genre and were based on rules that the viewer knows very well. Craven takes them again for himself to reveal the tricks of the trade and to dynamite the clichés. Thus it gives both a highly terrific and terrifying piece of work in which Craven involves the viewer at all levels. One should note down all the witty lines the film shelters and the black humor of a formidable efficiency which lacked in so called gore masterworks like John Carpenter's "Halloween" (1978). I dig the "test" in the first sequence the killer asks to Drew Barrymore about horror flicks. Painstakingly built, full of ideas, nods or allusions to gore films which secured the popularity and the trademark of the slasher genre. Craven's film has also the ability to make us shiver and to be jubilant thanks to what has been said before and also thanks to a taut scenario in which the murders aren't only the worthwhile moments as it's often the case in many mediocre horror films. Craven also doesn't fear to delay sequences as much as he can to stretch terror and treat, notably the first one and all that happens in the big isolated house where the students party while very bad things occur near them.
This is a film to cherish and to ponder about provided you have nerves of steel and if you keep in mind that it's just pure cinema. And one of the characters says: "there has to be one or several sequels to a film of this kind". It was judicious from Craven to have included this cue for there will be two sequels. But the pernicious charm that wraps "Scream" will be absent in its two heirs.