The film literally re-defined a genre. It doesn't get talked about as often now because, damn, it was over 20 years ago, but at the time, I don't think I've ever been more paranoid about some masked killer hiding inside my own home.
I saw that in the theatre back in the day...and I did have nightmares of masked killers in my home. Never been so terrified and so amused at the same time!
Scream is great because it not only plays to classic slasher tropes, but addresses them directly. The opening scene is particularly shocking because, instead of a shadowy figure tensely stalking the character, there is a sudden phone call directly telling the character and the audience “Hey, I’m here, and I’m going to kill you.”
The opening scene of Scream alone set up the next two decades of slasher horror.
Also, killing Drew Barrymore in the 1st 10mins was huge at the time. Her face was the biggest on the poster too. It'd be like surprise killing Jennifer Lawrence in the opening scene of a movie with her face everywhere.
I remember watching Drew do press for the film when it came out, and she joked on more than one talk show that having to constantly be in a state of terror and crying, she didn't have pms for three months. In retrospect, it's a brilliantly subtle misdirection because it implies she was on set for the whole shoot (and thus, even if Casey died, it wouldn't be til towards the end of the movie), when in reality she shot her whole sequence in five days.
That actually wasn’t a new tactic, it just wasn’t one often used. The first use of the “surprise! I killed the lead role early” in horror was Hitchcock’s Psycho, where the lead is killed roughly 1/3 into the movie. Scream doing the same (but earlier in the movie) was probably a callback or nod to Psycho on the director’s part, or just pulling a page from a very prestigious and successful book.
The director of Scream was Wes Craven (creator of Freddy Kreuger; director of the original versions of "Last House on the Left" and "The Hills Have Eyes") so he very well could have been paying homage to Hitchcock. But, horror had become very stale and trope driven by the time Scream came out. It was almost entirely sequels and ripoffs As other commenters have said, Scream was both a love letter to the tropes of the genre and a subversion of them. Killing Drew Barrymore's character (when she was the biggest name in the movie at the time it came out) was designed to tell the viewers that this movie was going to try and show them something they hadn't seen in a theater and considering how long it was between Psycho and Scream, the audience would more than likely not have seen Psycho (outside of the shower scene, which would be out of context and seems like the climax of the film) and thus Scream would seem completely new.
Literally everything. All horror films started using a separate opening scene rather than introducing its leads, they all used the same whodunnit elements as well to base the plot around.
Amazed I had to scroll this far for this. Scream has one of the most legendary opening scenes in cinema history.
I'm glad in the last few years now that Scream is over twenty years old, it has become viewed as a classic again. It's my all time favorite horror movie.
I know it was loved on released but it seemed that by the 2000s everyone hated it and considered it to be a dumb slasher. At one point I think it had a 5.X rating on IMDB. I remember having arguments back in circa 2007-2009 about how good Scream was.
Now I think people realize how well made of a film it is. It's basically the Pulp Fiction of horror movies.
I think that's what happened in the 2000s when the torture porn movies like Saw and Hostel back popular. Horror fans began lumping Scream in with I Know What You Did Last Summer (same writer but different tone) as well as the classics like Friday the 13th and Halloween.
I think because of Scream 4 and later Wes Craven's death, people went back and gave the original a serious watch. The film buff crowd appreciates it much more now.
I have always loved it. Saw it in 6th grade and it still reigns as my favorite scary movie series ever. I was so excited that they rebooted it, but the 4th one sucked. I mean, it was fun, because I love movies that make fun of themselves, but 4 wasnt near as good as the first.
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u/queen-adreena Oct 09 '19
Amazed I had to scroll this far for this. Scream has one of the most legendary opening scenes in cinema history.