1136. Scream (1996)

Starring: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette

Director: Wes Craven

Running Time: 111 mins

Scream is an American film about a deranged murderer who stalks a young woman and her friends, all the while killing off the people around her as her life begins to take a turn for the worse.

Although it doesn’t execute it perfectly, Scream is a film with a hugely interesting and entertaining premise. The movie does end up as a bit of a run-of-the-mill horror film for the majority of its duration, and isn’t as exciting or fun as is shown off in the fantastic opening and climactic sequences.

Let’s start there, actually, first with the opening sequences that has quickly become a true icon of modern horror. You all know the one, where a young woman, alone at home, is called numerous times by an anonymous man, and it is brilliant.

As well as being a great way to start off the film by throwing you in the deep end with the best mystery and fear that the whole movie has to offer, it’s also massively entertaining to watch. You will feel tense in that sequence, but you won’t be hiding behind the sofa, because it also has a very light-hearted and satirical, tone to it all.

The whole film is actually a send-up of the horror genre, with countless in-jokes and references to films like Friday The 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street, and so, if you’re a fan of the genre, you will have such a good time with this film as it nods its head to all of the classics.

However, in the first sequence, and then again in the finale, it is a very enjoyable film to watch for all, regardless of your opinions about the horror genre. Yes, the violence and gore is a little explicit, but it’s all done in such a way that it looks far more cartoonish than realistic, and that only contributes to the fun element of it all even more.

So, there are some brilliantly clever satirical and impressively exciting moments in this film, but, truth be told, the majority is a bit of a let down in comparison to those times.

For the duration of about 80 minutes or so, this isn’t a particularly captivating film, and although it tries to replicate its best moments again and again, it very rarely succeeds, and ends up falling into the tropes of the exact genre it’s designed to imitate, and so isn’t really that impressive, and that’s why Scream gets a 6.8 from me.