A Review of "Scream" (1996)

"Sorry ma'am, usually I prank call Domino's Pizza"

In space, nobody can hear this movie! At least, that's how I think the tagline goes. As part of my subpar, minimalistic Halloween 2K19 celebration, I wanted to take a look at a series of films I hadn't every seen before. I had seen the first Scream many moons ago in high school, but the sequels I hadn't ever bothered to watch. Until now! First, let's start off with my rewatch of Scream, a slasher movie made in the 90s to tribute the slasher movies of the 70s and 80s. Wes Craven directs this tale of a horror movie buff shrouded in a cheap, common "Father Death" costume, hacking teenagers just after asking them what their favorite scary movie is. There's even references to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven's slasher classic, including a line that shits on all the sequels. Take that, Hollywood franchising!

She could report on watching different brands
of paint drying... I'd still watch.

The movie starts as high school student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) receives a flirty phone call from an unknown person, asking her, "What's your favorite scary movie?" However, the caller turns sadistic and threatens her life. He reveals that her boyfriend Steve Orth (Kevin Patrick Walls) is being held hostage and demands she answer questions about horror films. After Casey gets one wrong, Steve is murdered gruesomely. When Casey refuses to answer more questions, she is murdered by a masked killer. Her parents come home to find her corpse hanging from a tree, gutted like a deer. Well that's always fun. Let this be a lesson that caller ID is more valuable than we give it credit for. In fact, I read online that caller ID setups quadrupled after this movie came out. The following day, the news media descend on the town and a police investigation begins. Meanwhile, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) struggles with the impending first anniversary of her mother's murder by Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber, of all people). While waiting at home for her friend Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan), Sidney receives a threatening phone call. After she hangs up she is attacked by the Ghostface killer, but manages to escape. Sidney's boyfriend Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) arrives shortly after, but after he drops his cell phone, Sidney suspects him of making the call and flees. Billy is arrested and Sidney spends the night at Tatum's house, where she receives another threatening call. This film is eerily similar in story flow and plot elements to A Nightmare on Elm Street. The girl in the beginning that we think is the main character gets killed, a boyfriend is wrongly accused and gets arrested while the new lead girl is desperate to get to the bottom of it all? No wonder Wes Craven seemed like such a shoo-in.

"Stu, is that your hand?"

Billy is released the next day. Suspicion has shifted to Sidney's father Neil Prescott (Lawrence Hecht), as the calls have been traced to his phone. School is suspended in the wake of the murders. After the students have left the school, Principal Himbry (The Fonz, Henry Winkler) is stabbed to death in his office. Tatum's boyfriend Stu Macher (Shaggy himself, Matthew Lillard) throws a party to celebrate the school's closure. The party is attended by Sidney, Tatum, their friend Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), and many other students. Reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) attends uninvited to cover the situation, as she expects the killer to strike. Tatum's brother deputy sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette) also looks out for the murderer at the party. Tatum is killed during the party by having her neck crushed by the garage door. Meanwhile, the recently freed Billy arrives to speak to Sidney privately, and the two ultimately consummate their relationship. Dewey and Gale investigate a nearby abandoned car that is parked in the woods near Stu's house, and nearly awkwardly consummate their own brooding relationship. Back at the house, many party attendees are drawn away after hearing news of Himbry's death; Sidney, Billy, Randy, Stu, and Gale's cameraman Kenny (W. Earl Brown) remain.

I was going to call myself "Ghostknife", but I had
to dial that back.

After bumping uglies, Sidney and Billy are attacked by the Ghostface killer from out of nowhere, who seemingly murders Billy. Sidney narrowly escapes from the house and seeks help from Kenny, but the killer slits his throat. Gale and Dewey, having discovered that the car belongs to Neil Prescott, return to the house. They believe Neil is the killer and has come to the party to continue his spree. Gale tries to escape in her van, but drives off the road to avoid hitting Sidney and crashes. Dewey is later stabbed in the back (literally, not figuratively) while investigating in the house, and Sidney takes his gun. Stu and Randy appear and accuse each other of being the killer. Sidney retreats into the house, where she finds Billy wounded but still alive. She gives Billy the gun; he lets Randy into the house and shoots him. Billy reveals that he feigned his injuries and is actually the killer; Stu is his accomplice. Not going to lie, pretty sick twist.

"Come on, lady. It's my first day. Stop yelling at me."

Billy and Stu discuss their plan to kill Sidney and frame the murder spree on her father, whom they have taken hostage. The pair also reveal that they, not Cotton, murdered her mother Maureen, as she was having an affair with Billy's father, which drove his mother away. Gale, who survived the crash, intervenes, and Sidney takes advantage of this to turn the tables on her attackers, killing Stu. Yep, that's right, you get to witness Shaggy get murdered by the chick from Masters of the Universe. God, I love Hollywood. Thankfully, Randy is revealed to be wounded but alive. Billy attacks Sidney one last time, but she shoots him in the head, killing him. As the sun rises and police arrive, Dewey, badly injured, is taken away by ambulance and Gale makes an impromptu news report about the night's events.

Scream is a lot of fun, and it pays tribute to a lot of old-fashioned slasher movie tropes while still seeming fresh and original. Sidney is a great lead character, but her boyfriend I gotta say is one lousy actor. A lot of his deliveries seem creepy. This, of course, isn't a problem when he's revealed to be the killer at the end of the movie, but when he's just in Sidney's bedroom trying to seduce her in the beginning of the movie? Seems like his overacting is kind of a stretch. He's way too hammy. Stu is obviously a treat. The exchange we see between him and Randy is glorious when Randy is discussing the rules to follow to survive a horror movie. The rules are as follows:

1. You may not survive the movie if you have sex.
2. You may not survive the movie if you drink or do drugs.
3. You may not survive the movie if you say "I'll be right back", "Hello?" or "Who's there?"

They both look like one farted and neither one knows who did it

Upon delivering the third rule, Stu goes "I'm grabbing another beer, you want one?" Randy says "Sure" and Stu comically replies "I'll be right back!" I don't know why, always loved that. Courteney Cox is hot... er... I mean... fiercely present as Gale Weathers, the bitch reporter that exploited Sidney's mother's murder for book money. Dewey is such a lovable dud, but he only kind of plays it off like that. Other times, he's strong-witted and brave. Kind of an awkward mish-mash, considering I was expecting your average country bumpkin. The kills are pretty brutal, but also lowkey and not on screen for very long. In fact, the only way this movie got an R rating as opposed to an NC-17 rating was that Wes Craven told the MPAA to view it like a comedy movie, not a horror movie. Once this was said, the MPAA's viewpoint changed and the film was awarded an R rating. I chuckled at that when I read it. It has typical, over-the-top background horror movie characters. Obviously it couldn't be entirely original, but this isn't really a detriment. The Ghostface costume has become synonymous with slasher-movie horror, and has become an icon ranking right up there with Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and even Michael Myers himself. Also being one of the few besides Freddy that has a voice and a personality... supplied by the eerily creepy sounding Roger L. Jackson. I already checked... no relation to Samuel L. Jackson.

Scream is one you should definitely check out. A 90's tribute to classic slasher movies while being a brand new franchise all on its own. Pretty great.