9 / 10
Scream is Wes Craven’s 1996 American slasher film depicting a high school targeted by a killer in a Ghostface mask who knows horror-genre conventions and uses them against his victims. Neve Campbell plays Sidney Prescott. Drew Barrymore plays Casey Becker. David Arquette plays Dewey Riley. Courteney Cox plays Gale Weathers. Skeet Ulrich plays Billy Loomis. Matthew Lillard plays Stu Macher. Rose McGowan plays Tatum Riley. The screenplay was written by Kevin Williamson, his first produced screenplay.
Dimension Films and Miramax produced the film for theatrical release in December 1996 to major commercial success that revitalized the slasher subgenre after its mid-1990s commercial decline.
Scream operates as both genuine slasher film and as meta-commentary about slasher films. Kevin Williamson’s screenplay establishes that the characters are aware of horror-genre conventions and discuss them openly throughout the running time, with rules-of-horror conversations integrated into the actual narrative. The technique gives the film permission to use slasher conventions while acknowledging them, which produced a viewing experience that 1996 horror audiences hadn’t previously encountered. The cumulative effect revitalized the slasher subgenre and shaped subsequent horror productions for the following decade.
The Drew Barrymore Opening
The film’s opening sequence with Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker has become one of the most consequential opening scenes in modern horror. Barrymore was the film’s highest-billed actor and was marketed as the production’s lead. Her death within the first ten minutes operated against audience expectations in a manner similar to Psycho’s Marion Crane death thirty-six years earlier, with the structural parallel deliberately invoked by Williamson’s screenplay.
The opening sequence runs approximately thirteen minutes and operates as miniature horror film within the surrounding feature. The phone-call menace, the horror-trivia interrogation, the home-invasion violence, the eventual brutal death all establish the film’s specific tonal register before the actual plot begins. The sequence has been imitated by subsequent horror productions without successful replication.
For Writers
Opening sequences that subvert star-power expectations can shape audience response across entire films. The Drew Barrymore opening establishes Scream’s certain tonal register and signals to the audience that no character is safe from the screenplay’s plot mechanics.
The Meta-Horror Structure
Williamson’s screenplay establishes that the characters are horror-genre literate and discuss the rules of horror films openly. Randy Meeks, the video-store-clerk character played by Jamie Kennedy, delivers the rules speech at a party midway through the film, explaining that you can never have sex, never drink or do drugs, and never say ‘I’ll be right back’ in a horror film. The rules are then deliberately violated by the surrounding plot.
The meta-structure could have collapsed into pure parody if Williamson had committed only to genre commentary. The screenplay maintains genuine slasher-film stakes throughout despite the awareness, the technique’s distinct accomplishment. The characters know they’re in a horror situation, comment on the conventions, and then suffer or survive the actual conventions despite their awareness. The combination is difficult to sustain and Williamson’s screenplay maintains it across the full running time.
For Writers
Meta-genre productions work when the screenplay maintains commitment to the underlying genre even while commenting on it. Scream refuses to collapse into pure parody despite its sustained genre awareness.
Wes Craven’s Direction
Wes Craven had directed A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984 and was approaching his career as a senior horror professional by 1996. His direction handles Williamson’s screenplay with the particular craftsmanship that the meta-structure required: serious enough that the horror works, light enough that the comedy works, integrated enough that neither register undermines the other.
Craven’s set-pieces include the opening Drew Barrymore sequence, the bathroom encounter, the garage-door killing, the final-act house party with Ghostface attacks on multiple victims at the same time. Each sequence demonstrates professional horror craftsmanship that the surrounding meta-commentary doesn’t interrupt. The director-screenplay collaboration produced one of the most successful balance acts in modern horror.
For Writers
Genre-meta productions require directors who can hold the genre’s actual conventions while the screenplay comments on them. Craven’s craftsmanship gives Scream’s commentary the substantial horror foundation required to sustain its self-awareness.
Craft Note
Scream cost approximately fifteen million dollars and grossed approximately one hundred seventy-three million worldwide, a real commercial success that revitalized both the slasher subgenre and Miramax’s horror division. The film launched a major franchise: Scream 2 (1997), Scream 3 (2000), Scream 4 (2011), Scream (2022), and Scream VI (2023). The Scream television series ran from 2015 to 2019 with separate continuity. The original 1996 film remains the strongest entry in the franchise and one of the most consequential horror productions of the 1990s.
Is Scream as good as people say?
Scream is one of the strongest horror films of the 1990s and a primary text for the modern slasher subgenre. Wes Craven’s direction, Kevin Williamson’s screenplay, the Drew Barrymore opening, and the sustained meta-horror structure combine to produce a film that’s shaped subsequent horror filmmaking for nearly three decades. Required viewing.
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This film appears on 2 of my film lists