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Sometimes, a film man­ages to reach clas­sic sta­tus while being extremely divi­sive in the fan com­mu­nity.  Scream is such a film.  At a time when the hor­ror genre was com­mer­cially mori­bund, this film gave it an adren­a­lin shot to the heart and made it rel­e­vant once more to the moviego­ing pub­lic.  However, it angered hard­core hor­ror fans with its multiplex-friendly gloss and use of genre-skewering humor.  Its suc­cess also ush­ered in a glut of lesser imi­ta­tors that lim­ited oppor­tu­ni­ties for hor­ror film­mak­ers want­ing to do any­thing dif­fer­ent — and that includes 2 weak Scream sequels.

The big hook in Scream is Kevin Williamson’s inven­tive script, which applies a savvy Hollywood treat­ment to horror’s sim­plest sub­genre.  The vir­tu­oso open­ing sequence depicts one Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) — who looks like she’ll be the main char­ac­ter — being bedev­iled via phone by an stalker who threat­ens to kill her and her boyfriend if she fails a quiz on hor­ror movies.  When she fails, she is bru­tally mur­dered while her unwit­ting par­ents enter the house (a clever nod to a sim­i­lar cir­cum­stance in Craven’s own Last House On The Left).  Not only does this start the film off with a nice jolt, it also lets the audi­ence know that the slasher film’s old rules will be broken.

The double-murder shocks the small sub­ur­ban town of Woodsboro, which soons finds itself beset by a pack of reporters that includes a nasty tabloid type named Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox).  The killer soon reap­pears and focuses his atten­tions on Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a pop­u­lar but sub­dued teen still deal­ing with the trau­matic, mys­te­ri­ous mur­der of her mother.  He begins to taunt Sidney from the side­lines as the local cops try to find the killer.  The killer finally makes his homi­ci­dal play for her dur­ing a house party that becomes a bloodbath.

The end result holds up despite the many imi­ta­tions that fol­lowed thanks to its clever take on tired mate­r­ial. Williamson’s script takes the slasher genre — which had slipped into a coma some­where between the mid and late 1980’s — and rein­vents it by hold­ing up a fun­house mir­ror to its clichés and rules.  It pumps up the pro­ceed­ings with snappy, John Hughes-ish dia­logue and is also inven­tive in how it ref­er­ences its influ­ences: the open­ing scene pays trib­ute to When A Stranger Calls while the final reveal of the killer’s iden­tity tips its hat to Happy Birthday To Me.  On the lat­ter ele­ment, it’s also worth not­ing that its one of the few mod­ern slash­ers that actu­ally has a sat­is­fy­ing “reveal” for its killer.  In short, Williamson essen­tially does for the slasher film what Quentin Tarantino did for exploita­tion films: he opens up the subgenre’s tropes with skill­ful writ­ing as he sub­verts the audience’s expectations.

Better yet, Scream ben­e­fits from smart, eco­nom­i­cal direc­tion by Wes Craven.  He plays against the expec­ta­tions of hor­ror film style, using a lot of sunny exte­ri­ors and a bright, pas­tel color scheme that pro­vides an ironic back­drop for the killer’s may­hem.  He under­stands the rela­tion­ship between humor and hor­ror and allows these ele­ments to feed into each other, trick­ing the audi­ence into breath­ing easy with a laugh before jolt­ing them with a shock.  Best of all, he’s not afraid to get mean when the mate­r­ial requires it: the film opens and closes with extended set­pieces that start on a play­ful note and grad­u­ally shift into bru­tal­ity in a way that truly packs a punch.

Craven also gets strong per­for­mances from a cast that was mostly unknown to film­go­ers at the time.  Campbell has a lim­ited range but makes the most of it, nail­ing down her pleas­ant but trou­bled char­ac­ter­i­za­tion in a sym­pa­thetic man­ner.  Cox gets a showier role and plays the film’s res­i­dent bitch with style.   Her venom is off­set nicely by a comedic turn from David Arquette as Dewey, the well-meaning but goofy local deputy.  Skeet Ulrich is bet­ter than you prob­a­bly remem­ber as Billy, Sidney’s brood­ing beau, and Jamie Kennedy’s slap­stick turn as res­i­dent hor­ror nerd Randy remains a nice feat of comedic show­man­ship.  Elsewhere, new­bies should keep an eye turned for cameos from Linda Blair and Craven him­self, plus a delight­ful bit role by Henry Winkler as the school’s weirdo principal.

In short, Scream still works.  It’s point­less at this junc­ture to talk about the valid­ity (or lack thereof) of intro­duc­ing post-modern irony and self-reflexive humor to the hor­ror genre.  It hap­pened and it’s over and done with.  Scream led the charge and, even if you don’t like its style of hor­ror, the film’s craft and inven­tive­ness deserve admi­ra­tion.  It’s a good story told well — and that’s always wel­come, par­tic­u­larly in the hor­ror genre.