Scream (1996)

Scream (or stylized as S C R E A M) is a 1996 American black comedy slasher film directed by Wes Craven, produced by Cathy Conrad, Cary Woods, and Woods Entertainment, written by Kevin Williamson, musically composed by Marco Beltrami, filmed by Mark Irwin, edited by Patrick Lussier, distributed by Dimension Films, and starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Courteney Cox, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, and Drew Barrymore.

Plot
Wes Craven re-invented and revitalised the slasher-horror genre with this modern horror classic, which manages to be funny, clever and scary, as a fright-masked knife maniac stalks high-school students in middle-class suburbia. Craven is happy to provide both tension and self-parody as the body count mounts - but the victims aren't always the ones you'd expect.

Why It's Not The Killer

 * 1) Great acting especially from Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy, Courteney Cox, Drew Barrymore and Roger Jackson.
 * 2) Effectively creepy costume for the killer, Ghost Face.
 * 3) Unlike most horror movie villains, Ghost Face is a normal human, and only uses a normal hunting knife. However, this only helps to make the situation more relatable and thus scarier.
 * 4) Humorous in-jokes and self-aware characters.
 * 5) Lots of horror movie references. Probably the most well known is when Ghost Face informs one of the characters that the killer in the first Friday the 13th Movie is not Jason but is his mother, which even to this day a lot of people who haven't seen the movies don't know about.
 * 6) One of the best movie satires of all time.
 * 7) It's able to make fun of horror movie tropes, while still fitting perfectly fine within those tropes.
 * 8) Good soundtrack.
 * 9) The iconic opening scene involving Casey Becker, who becomes one of the first victims of Ghostface.
 * 10) While it makes fun of a lot of tropes, the movie also created and popularized the trope of the killer calling up on the phone (Which is also used in various other 90s films like Speed with Howard Payne, The Rock with General Hummel, Air Force One with Ivan Korshunov, In the Line of Fire with Mitch Leary, Die Hard with a Vengeance with Simon Gruber, etc.). Some people have also humorously stated that the movie forced people to get caller ID.
 * 11) The film is also notable for kickstarting one of the most popular horror movie franchises in the modern age.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) While the pop-culture references are still memorable, they can get a bit dull at times.

Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 78% based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 7.05/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Horror icon Wes Craven's subversive deconstruction of the genre is sly, witty, and surprisingly effective as a slasher film itself, even if it's a little too cheeky for some." On review aggregator Metacritic, the film holds a score of 65 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Trivia
This film was originally rated NC-17 by the MPAA due to some gruesome gore moments, but 7 seconds was edited in order to obtain an R rating.

The film was parodied in the 2000 horror comedy film Scary Movie.

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