What is it about Scream that etches it into the annals of horror history? Is it the absurd simplicity of Ghostface, the bumbling antagonist? Or did it just come along at the right time? Scream, no doubt has become an icon of the genre.
It didn't just pull the genre out of the past and into the 90s with a memorable opening kill scene, it also gave the industry a powerful and genuine boost. 13 years after the success of his 1984 masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street, director Wes Craven embarked on a new journey with Scream, inspired by the real-life horrors of the Gainesville Ripper.
It introduced us to its final girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a high school student whose life is turned upside down by the arrival of Ghostface, a clumsy killer clad in a Halloween costume. As the body count rises and suspicion falls on Sidney's boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich), the stage is set for a showdown where nothing is as it seems.
While Scream pays a lot of homage to its predecessors, it also blazes its own trail, carving out a new path for the slasher genre. It embraced and subverted traditional tropes, such as the final girl archetype and the iconic horror soundtrack, Scream managed to feel both familiar and fresh, appealing to fans of classic horror while also appealing and attracting a new generation of viewers.
In the years since its release, it has solidified its status as a beloved classic, spawning an incredibly successful franchise of sequels and spin-offs and inspiring countless imitators and earning a place in the hearts of horror fans everywhere.
The Opening Scene
This film was a pioneer in featuring an antagonist who inflicted mental torture upon his victims before ultimately taking their lives, and horror fans loved it. The opening sequence of the film reveals that he is not simply a deranged killer, but rather a calculated and analytical individual who carefully selects his targets.
In the iconic opening scene (Yes, I said iconic), we get to see Casey (played by Drew Barrymore), a young woman who is being terrorized by an unknown killer over the phone. As her boyfriend is held captive outside, the killer challenges Casey to answer some horror movie trivia questions.
If she succeeds, her boyfriend will be spared; if not, he will be killed. Despite correctly answering the first question about the killer in Halloween, Casey falters on the second question, mistakenly identifying Jason Voorhees as the killer in the original Friday the 13th film instead of his mother. As a result, her boyfriend is brutally murdered, and Casey herself is gruesomely killed and left hanging from a tree for her parents to discover.
Scream's opening scenes have become symbolic with the whole franchise, with fans often debating about what actually is the best opening scene in the franchise? The correct answer will always be the first one, BTW.
Self-Awareness and Satire
At the heart of the movies success is its self-awareness and dark humor, which elevate it above mere imitation. It cleverly blends irony, self-reference, and social meta commentary. From Casey's ill-fated phone call with Ghostface to Randy's iconic rules for surviving horror movies, Scream delights in subverting expectations and poking fun at genre conventions.
One of the best things about the franchise as a whole is how every one of them follows the same blueprint, infrastructure, and design, yet cleverly incorporates just enough questionable details to either clear or implicate every suspect.
There is a comedic element in the fact that even the characters are acutely aware of the ironic repetition in their stories and the embarrassment of never being able to identify Ghostface.
Beneath its comedic veneer though, Scream actually delivers genuine shocks and surprises. In a genre known for one-dimensional characters and predictable plots, the film dared to defy convention, infusing its story with unexpected twists and turns that kept us all guessing until the final frame.
Ghostface
The success of the movie spawned a villain that people actually loved, and Ghostface emerged as a killer for a new generation. When Scream first hit the screens, horror fans were still living in the world of Jason and Freddy.
While these slasher movies were good, we craved something fresh and exciting. Enter Wes Craven, who brought Ghostface to the masses and indeed filled that void we were craving, even if we did not realise it.
The mask is iconic, the costume is iconic, his humor is iconic, the knive and his kills are iconic, the ominious phone calls are iconic. We loved the element of mystery of wondering and guessing who is behind the mask before the final reveal. Ghostface could be anybody. It helped take the slasher genre to places it had never been before, and one that horror fans delighted in.
There's something really scary about a guy with a knife who just... snaps.
What's your opinion on the movie and franchise as a whole?
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What Is The Influence and Legacy Of Psycho?
Why Do We Love The Thrill Of Horror?
Differences Between The Book and Movie Of 'The Shining'
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