Scream

UK Release Date. 2 May 1997
Certification. 18
Running Time. 1 hour 51 mins
Director. Wes Craven
Cast. David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Henry Winkler.
Rating. 55%

Review.

The once confident self-awareness and irony of Scream is now something of a cliché, but it is all too easy to forget what a breath of fresh air Wes Craven's film was at the time of release. Scream was released in the late 1990s at a time when the horror film genre was dying out. The standard bearer slasher films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Halloween (1978), Friday The 13th (1980) and A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) were flatlining - with the sixth, seventh or eighth sequel firmly established as permanent residents in the straight-to-video bin in the local Blockbuster Video.

Scream would appear to follow the same teen-slasher movie plot of an entire genre. A quiet, non-descript town, Mainstreet, USA [in this case, Woodsboro, California] is traumatised by a series of brutal murders, which may potentially be linked to a murder a decade earlier [blink, and you'll miss a fleeting glimpse of Liev Schreiber in an early role as the convicted killer Cotton Weary]. The local law enforcement imposes a curfew on the town, in response, the local adolescent population throw a party, and surprise-surprise, are slain one by one.

The predominantly young cast excels. Drew Barrymore steals the show as Casey Becker in the now iconic opening scene. Skeet Ulrich promises much in the role of Billy Loomis, but this is Neve Campbell's film, and indeed franchise, as Sidney Prescott, Scream's very own "big-breasted girl who can't act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door." Except Campbell can act. And does. In contrast, Matthew Lillard is beyond annoying as the perpetually grinning and incessantly insensitive Stuart Macher.

In its day, Scream was most certainly a smart, confident and inventive film built to keep you guessing - who is the murderer behind the now-familiar Ghostface mask?