Scream
HORROR-THON 2023 • IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD
8/10
DIRECTOR: Wes Craven
STARRING: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Skeet Ulrich
RELEASED: 1996
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 51 minutes
WATCH ON: Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock, Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Amazon
SCARE LEVEL: Medium, with a lot of jumps
ANSWERING THE PHONE: Absolutely not.
The phone rings. A voice asks what your favorite scary movie is. Twenty minutes later, nobody in the room is okay. This is exactly why no one who grew up in the ‘90s answers the phone anymore. We all learned it from this movie.
It’s been a year since Sidney Prescott’s mother was murdered, and the small town of Woodsboro is still talking about it. Then a killer in a black robe and a ghost mask starts calling teenagers and quizzing them on horror movie trivia before attacking.
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Sidney becomes the main target. A tabloid reporter shows up in town. Her friends start treating the whole thing like a movie, complete with rules about who survives. And everybody is a suspect, including her boyfriend.
It all comes together at a house party, where the rules of horror movies get tested in real time.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
The script is by Kevin Williamson, who also wrote I Know What You Did Last Summer from my 2021 Horror-Thon list. Scream is the one that made him famous, and it’s the one everyone copied.
First of all, I love that everyone says “cellular” and “cellular phone.” Every time someone pulls one out, it’s an event. It’s the most 1996 thing in a very 1996 movie.
Hot Take: The final chaotic scenes are the only thing that’s interesting about this movie. The opening is famous, I know. But the middle is a lot of teens explaining horror rules to each other. Then the last act at the party goes completely off the rails, with fake-outs, blood, and the reveal. I loved it.
I said what I said.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
The high school scenes were meant to be shot at Santa Rosa High School in California, but at the last minute, the school board read the script and denied access for them to film there due to the violent nature. As payback, Wes Craven put “NO THANKS WHATSOEVER TO THE SANTA ROSA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT GOVERNING BOARD” in the end credits “Special Thanks” section.