Scream

I was supposed to see this back in October, and on the way to the cinema I ended up with a burst tire, so getting to see it in a empty cinema last night (sadly without my friend who was going to come in October) truly fulfilled the child in me, Scream has always remained in my top 3 slasher movies, possibly even tired first with Halloween, this franchise means so much to me, even before seeing it I would beg my brother to let me watch it and he would always say no, my mum said no (not sure why I thought she would let me watch it considering my brother didn’t but oh well) , she told me how she worked in a video store and took it home, watched it in daylight and after the opening scene had to turn it off because it scared her so much, but I would persist, eventually she gave in, and after Casey’s death in the opening, yeah she was right I had to turn it off and had nightmares for weeks, Scream stands out for many reasons, it has all the key ingredients of a horror film, your tropes and scares are all here, but it’s so clever in its writing, it remains witty and twists your expectations the majority of the time at the same time, A Good Example is when Sidney played wonderfully by Neve Campbell is first attacked, she literally calls out the trope of a girl being chased up the stairs instead of going out the front door, and then locks the front door forcing her to go up the stairs, and when the house eventually needs to be cleared to whittle it down to our main players, it isn’t just a cheap excuse, it’s something most drunk teenagers would do and feels like a valid excuse to get every side character gone, This film is of course known for being really meta, so much so that I like to think the line “Jamie He’s Behind You” was written because Jamie Kennedy is portraying Randy, but the meta commentary is really the chefs kiss on this movie, every character is basically admiring they know there in a horror movie but still blurring the lines of fiction, it literally redefined the genre and makes Randy’s eventual line “Everyone’s a suspect” so true, while I think the more and more you watch the movie there’s more hints who the killer is, and even perhaps it’s easy to guess on a first time viewing, every character outside of Sidney is a possible killer, The cast is perfectly cast and just the cherry on top of a already well crafted film, everyone fits into a archetype of a horror movie, you have the Virgins, the nerds, the sex crazed teenagers, we’ve all been one and we all knew the others, but my favourites in the series have to be Dewey & Gail, played by David Arrquette & Courtney Cox, we’ve all been like Dewey nervous around a hot older women like Gail, and there relationship builds up so nicely over the series. Scream works in any timeframe because it’s not just a generic slasher, it’s a movie that’s clever and funny by calling out tropes we still see in the genre today by playing & twisting them while also still manage to provide the scares 3 decades later, it doesn’t rely on its memorable kills to keep you invested, in fact there’s only 3 deaths in the first hour, it’s the writing and relatable characters we come to love that keeps us invested.