Scream Review...

Scream is an American horror film directed by Wes Craven in 1996. The film tells the story of the fictional town Woodsboro being terrorised by a masked killer who enjoys tormenting his victims with phone calls and movie references. The killer's main target is a teenage girl whose mother fell victim to a brutal murder one year earlier. The film takes on a "whodunit" mystery, with many of her friends and townspeople being fellow targets and suspects. Scream was a box office success, grossing $173,046,663 internationally and received very positive reviews from critics with Rotten Tomatoes awarding the film an 81% rating. The film single-handedly revitalized the slasher film genre in the late 1990s, similar to the impact Halloween (1978) had on late 1970s film, by using a standard concept with a tongue-in-cheek approach that combined straightforward scares with dialogue that ridiculed slasher film conventions.

This was the first time I had seen Scream even though I had heard a lot about its successful impact in the film industry and I must say, it didn't disappoint. From beginning to end, its ridicule of the slasher film genre made it an enjoyable and very original concept for its time. Since then films like the Scary movie franchise have taken this concept and overused this concept to ridicule not only the horror/slasher film genre, but other genres and movies in general. I particularly liked the way the lead actress (Drew Barrymore) dies and straight away you can tell this is a slasher movie with a twist, playing with the "rules" that have been established, extremely cleverly. I had seen Scary Movie before this film which almost completely steals from and ridicules Scream, meaning that I was convinced the killer was the deputy, but how wrong could I be. Scream was a really enjoyable film and I loved the fact that it ridiculed this genre as I haven't watched a decent horror/slasher film for years, constantly being disappointed. I'm definitely going to watching the sequels now.