100 Greatest Horror Movies Of All Time
6. Scream
After the horror boon period of the late-70s and 80s, which brought the big three of Halloween, Friday The 13th, and A Nightmare On Elm Street, things had grown stale in U.S. horror by the mid-90s. It needed something to revitalise it; to breathe fresh life into its decaying corpse.
It needed… a slasher spoof from the guy who created Freddy Krueger and an unknown screenwriter!?
The satirical nature is only part of Scream’s genius: not only does the film know every trick and treat in the book, but so do its characters, giving this a wonderful meta-humour that allows it to riff on all that’s come before.
What else it does so well, though, and why it really works, is that it is itself a frightening, tense, and gory slasher movie. From the shocking opening, which sees Drew Barrymore killed off in fashion as hilarious as it is horrific, you know you’re in for a horror movie quite unlike any other, and Scream just keeps on delivering the goods.
Kevin Williamson’s script and Craven’s direction offer up genre subversions and deconstructions, married with sly humour, actual scares, and some fantastic character work. A pitch-perfect satire of the genre, but also a marvellous example of the form it mimics too.
[JH]