10 Famous Movies That Ruined The Reputations Of Classic Films

6. Scream Highlights The Formula Of Horror Films To General Audiences

With the films of Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith bringing pop culture aware protagonists to cinemas, it was only a matter of time before things went full-meta. Wes Craven had already tried to take a subversive look at the horror genre with New Nightmare, but it was with Scream a few years later where he really succeeded.

Kicking off with the murder of the promoted main character by a killer whose introductory line "what's your favourite scary movie?", it was clear this film and the characters, knew what genre they were in. As well as being a competent thriller in its own right (that twist that still gives chills), Scream has whole scenes where it overtly dissects horror movie clichés. This sort of thing was well known to those well read up on the genre, but to general audiences it was a red letter moment; suddenly the slasher films that had dominated cinema in the previous decade had been dissected in front of them. And no one was saved.

Halloween and its other groundbreaking contemporaries suddenly found themselves tarred with the label of following a well laid out formula. This is always a danger - when a film does something so competently a slew of imitators is going end up making it retroactively feel formulaic - but Scream pushed it even further; audiences dismissed the whole lot as predictable.