1996’s Scream is a really popular slasher film and was my first introduction to the horror genre in movies. I love all of the Scream movies, although I have yet to watch its newest 2026 installment, and the 1996 original is my favorite of them all, an opinion I share with many others.
The opening scene of Scream is one of my favorite parts of the movie, especially Casey Becker and how Drew Barrymore drew attention to her. Initially, Drew was asked to play the main character, Sidney Prescott, but she decided to play Casey Becker instead to subvert expectations. As a well-known child star, Barrymore was heavily featured in the movie’s advertising, so her death in the opening sequence surprised almost everyone in theaters when it was released. I also really like how we’re introduced to the phone call sequence that appears in every movie, with the haunting voice questioning the victim about the horror before attacking.
My favorite character of all time in the Scream franchise is, of course, Sidney Prescott. We’re introduced to her just a year after her mom was raped and murdered, and we can see throughout the movie how her death is still really affecting Sidney, especially now that there are more people dying around her. She has to defend her mom’s reputation while trying to get over her death, and nobody around her actually allows her to mourn her mom in peace.
One part of this movie that I think helps shape its tone is the realism of the world it takes place in. They live in a smaller town in California in the late 90s, and so pop culture heavily drives the dialogue and scripting. The biggest example is the mentions of popular horror movies, and the idea of killers using well-known horror tropes and openly talking about it had never been done, at least not at that scale, before. This meta-horror tone is one of my favorite parts of the movie and the whole Scream Franchise, with it really emphasizing the real-world setting. It also gives the audience a great chance to connect with the characters: horror geeks relating to Randy, or less enthusiastic movie watchers understanding Sidney better.
Wes Craven uses the meta aspect of this movie really well, and it’s the biggest thing the movie is known for besides its icon, Ghostface; even in the first scene, we see Casey Becker about to watch Halloween, and then, when Ghostface calls, he quizzes her multiple times on horror movies. The movie is littered with horror movie tropes and trivia, directly reflecting their popularity at the time.
The movie’s meta aspect also ties directly to the main plot, which I think is really well done. Craven makes a point to show Sidney following horror tropes: the first time Sidney gets a call from Ghostface, she confidently says horror movie tropes are dumb, then does the exact same thing when she runs upstairs instead of unlocking the door while being attacked; and while Randy is discussing the rules to survive a horror movie, Sidney is openly breaking them by getting with Billy upstairs. Even with all of these rules being broken and flaws with these characters, however, after the fight with Billy and Stu is over, Sidney is one of the ones to walk out alive, and still is to this day.
Two characters in this movie who are really important to the plot are Billy Loomis and Stu Macher. Billy and Stu are loved by a large portion of the Scream fan base, and Stu has been speculated to return to the franchise all the way back to 1999, though he only returned as a cameo in Scream 7 as an AI-generated deepfake. Both of these characters were part of the main friend group in this first movie, and every time I rewatch it, I can see just how clear it is that these two are the killers: they mention disturbing things constantly during a crisis, they disappear at weird times, and they just have overall disturbing personalities. I would guess that the only reason there was doubt in people’s minds that they could be the killers is just the lack of normalization of two killers in horror.
Overall, Scream is a really good movie and a great introduction to the movies that come after it. I appreciate that it’s a horror movie without being too gory or violent, keeping those scenes to certain parts of the movie. I also really like the actors they chose for this movie; they have great chemistry and make it a lot more enjoyable.
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