10 Movies That Changed Everything In Ways You Didn't Expect
2. Caller ID Use Tripled Overnight - Scream
There's no denying that Scream changed the slasher genre forever - Wes Craven's self-aware horror romp tore away the genre's cobwebs with a more media-literate take that went down a storm with gore-hounds.
If the original Scream is perhaps best remembered for its iconic opening sequence, in which Drew Barrymore - the apparent star of the movie - is brutally murdered by Ghostface, the scene evidently seemed to strike a chord with viewers on a wholly more visceral level.
In a 2020 cast reunion, Barrymore revealed that caller ID use tripled in 1996 following the movie's release, evidently due to the call-screening feature making it decidedly less likely that you'd end up on the phone with an unwanted caller - murderer or not.
This was even slyly referenced in Scream 2 the very next year, when Sidney (Neve Campbell) receives a prank call from a fellow college student pretending to be Ghostface, but she's able to deduce his identity and ruin the prank thanks to caller ID.