Scream

1996, 18, Directed by Wes Craven

Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, Courtney Cox

The slasher film is a difficult genre to nail and yet countless filmmakers take a stab at it hoping that they will provide their audience with a fresh original take that they probably do not need, but will enjoy. After a slew of horror hits dating as far back as 1972, including The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street (all of which have been tellingly remade), Wes Craven ingeniously adapted his love of all things bloody into a fresh groundbreaking take on that same genre. The plot is simple: a killer who has watched one too many scary movies terrorises teens of Woodsboro exactly one year after the particularly gruesome death of the mother of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). And so it is, Scream in it all its gruesome glory, doesn’t reinvent, more re-establishes the rule book. Amongst the slashing, there is a massive element of comedy: Jamie Kennedy’s horror-geek Randy runs through the dos and don’ts whilst watching Carpenter’s Halloween. The film verges on spoof without ever reverting to silly tactics; it is through the references to film’s past that the believability of these characters (Arquette’s hapless cop; Cox’s vivacious reporter) is reinforced and the tension raised. It is for this reason (combined with the iconic Ghostface) that Scream has emerged and will continue to be something of a modern horror classic. The film spawned three sequels, the fourth hitting cinemas last week 11 years after Scream 3.

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