10 Classic Halloween Movies To Watch This October 2021
7. Scream
In Wes Craven's Scream, a group of high schoolers find themselves being targeted by a masked murderer called Ghostface. The serial killer is obsessed with slashers and uses horror tropes to taunt his victims before slaying them.
Now, a self-aware horror movie is nothing new. (Wes Craven already poked fun at the genre in the Nightmare On Elm Street sequel, New Nightmare.) However, many self-aware films usually ridicule themselves to excuse the fact the plot and characters are derivative and cliched.
Luckily, Scream is the exception. Not only did it help restart the slasher genre, it's genuinely terrifying horror in its own right. The cat-and-mouse dynamic between Sidney and Ghostface is tense due to Neve Campbell's performance and the killer's genuinely terrifying voice. (Just hear him say the infamous line, 'Do you want to die, Sidney? Your mother sure didn't.')
Another element that helped define Scream is the mystery. Despite the fact there's not many key characters, next to no one correctly guessed the identity of the killer. (None of the cast members managed it either.)
Even though the sequels became borderline parodical, Scream deserves its reputation as a classic slasher.