Wes Craven resurrects the Slasher genre with one hell of a movie.

Rating: 8/10 (12 February 2008)

Horror movie are considered by most bottom-of-the-ladder cinema. And let's face it, they have a point. The True Classics can be counted on one hand. A Nightmare On Elm Street is fantastic, Carrie is brilliant, but only a few other movies in the genre deserve to be mentioned in one breath with them. 'Scream' is definitely one of them, a scary movie with real scares, a more than decent soundtrack, acting that is of a very rare quality in the genre and a very surprising ending for a change. What makes the movie work on the level of believability is the nifty way it was written. By the characters' constant mentioning of real movies, you get the sense that the world they live in is in fact ours. Countless movies use this technique (Donnie Darko with Evil Dead for instance) and it works very well on a subconscious level.
Another thing the movie has going for it, is the clichés. Craven actually embraces them and the film is filled with them on purpose. It actually ends with the ambulance and police cars shot, seen in countless action or horror movies.
Many people who haven't seen the movie may assume 'Scream' is just the next over-hyped brainless pubescent cinema, but it's far from that. It's without a doubt the best of the rebirth wave of slasher movies of the mid -90's (although I liked 'I know What You Did' too), and can in no way be compared to the truckload of bad horror movies coming out every day still. The plot is original in all it's cliché-glory and the characters are relatively complex, the mask may be a little laughable but 'Scream' was never meant to be taken seriously. It's a homage to slasher movies, and the homage turned out to be better than almost all films of it's kind.