Ranking What Was Really The Best Horror Movie Every Year 1990-2021
26. 1996: Scream
By 1996, the slasher genre was in desperate need of a palette cleanser, and Wes Craven was on hand to deliver exactly what everyone was after.
Not only is Scream an amusing homage to the subgenre's many iron-clad tropes, but it's also an exhilarating slasher flick in its own right, introducing audiences to the murderous Ghostface and haunted heroine Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) with style, humour, and welcome bolts from the blue.
It spawned a brilliant franchise, but no sequel has ever topped the ingenious calibre of the original, which left all other '96 horrors in the dust.