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Young Casey (Drew Barrymore) receives a phonecall from a mysterious caller (voiced by Roger Jackson) who first seems to flirt with her, but soon gets very dark and threatening, something that's only augmented when he reveals he has gotten hold of her boyfriend (Kevin Patrick Walls), and then kills him before her very eyes. Then he chases after her, dressed up in a cheap Halloween costume based on Edvard Munch's painting The Scream and brutally kills her, right before her parents (David Booth, Carla Hatley) arrive back home. Now her murder understandably traumatizes the whole local high school she went to, but especially Sidney (Neve Campbell), whose mother had been murdered only a year ago and who still hasn't come over it - much to the dismay of her sexually frustrated boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich). Then that night, Sidney is attacked by the Scream-killer - dubbed Ghostface for some reason - but can somehow ward him off. But when Billy shows up only moments later at her place, she suspects him of being the killer and he's temporarily arrested and only released when it's revealed that the phonecalls preceeding Casey's murder and the attack of Sidney did not come from his phone ... but from the phone of Sidney's dad, who's supposed to be on a business trip but has never arrived wherever it is. After the attack on Sidney, the school's shut down for the time being by its principal (Henry Winkler) - who soon enough is brutally murdered by Ghostface - and Sidney finds abode with her best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan) and Tatum's brother Deputy Dewey (David Arquette). Of course, with school out, all the youngsters soon have a party at horror nerd Randy's (Jamie Kennedy), where the killer soon strikes, killing Tatum - and right while Sidney finally gives up her virginity to Billy. Pretty much right after this, Sidney's chased around the house by Ghostface, who's eventually revealed to be not one but two men, Billy and Tatum's boyfriend Stuart (Matthew Lillard), the former because Sidney's mother had an affair with his father, causing his mother to abandon them, the latter because he's straight-out cuckoo. Now Sidney sure proves her worth as a fighter, but it's ultimately obnoxious reporter Gale (Courteney Cox) who saves her life.

By the mid-1990s, the slasher genre had pretty much run its course, with even the most prominent series gone on hiatus ... when Kevin Williamson did something almost revolutionary, pulling back the curtain and letting the casual audience in on genre mechanics, having the characters actually comment on-screen on the formula the movie's following. Now as good as the idea was, it led to pretty much every slasher thereafter making a self-ironic remark on its formula, while later disappointingly middle-of-the-road horror flicks scripted by Williamson proved that apart from this one-off he was a rather run-of-the-mill writer. Oh, and as for Scream, even though despite it seemed a bit like a one-trick pony, it spawned so far five sequels and a three-season TV spin-off.

But back to the film in question: Of course its main attraction was its self-referential and self-ironic approach, but what makes it work is that its director Wes Craven is deeply rooted in the horror genre and knows how to deliver the blows, making sure that the film won't just become a travesty, and thus most of the cast play it straight, there's plenty of suspense, the killings are gruesome (if not overly gory), and despite us being constantly reminded of the formula, there are a few surprises even - including a sight gag where Craven himself plays a school janitor in a Freddy Krueger sweater. The end-result is a surprisingly fresh slasher and a deserved classic - even if one could have done without the wave of second generation slashers this movie has spawned.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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