Wes Craven's satirical slasher Scream was an instant hit when it premiered in 1996, and its opening sequence has had horror fans quoting it ever since.
Much like Psycho forty years earlier, Scream took the bold decision to kill off a character early on who everyone expected to feature heavily throughout the film. In its case the character, Casey Becker (played by Drew Barrymore), becomes the first victim of Ghostface, the franchise's ghoulish serial killer who's able to boast an encyclopaedic knowledge of horror films.
It's a fantastic set-up, and subverts the first of many horror cliches Scream affectionately takes aim at. Barrymore's character was meant to be the film's lead, but in killing her so early, it became clear that this particular horror film wasn't going to play by the rules.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
