If you have any respect for the great forefathers of the horror movie genre, you better stand up and salute the Scream franchise. “Woah,” you might say, “I don’t really watch horror. You’re scaring me.”
“Excellent,” I would respond. “Let me tell you more.”
We all know who Ghostface is. Ghostface is the character who everyone dressed up as for Halloween in middle school. Scream was born in 1996 as the horror baby of screenwriter Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven, the Big Daddy of slasher films. If you are wondering why I call Craven the Big Daddy, You ever heard of Nightmare on Elm Street? Swamp Thing? The Hills Have Eyes? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
But Scream wasn’t your typical slasher movie. Williamson had a dream while writing his script: a dream that slasher movies could be gorier, but also funnier, and include hot, famous people like Drew Barrymore. If we want to get technical, it’s a classic piece of metafiction that pokes fun at horror movie tropes. If you like fiction that is self-aware, suspenseful, and hyperbolically gory, this stuff is for you.
Scream (1996), as any good horror classic does, founded a beautiful franchise that now consists of six films. The sixth film, Scream VI, is coming out March 10th. It is sticking to its core principles of hiring hot people, as we can see with Jenna Ortega, and with Wes Craven in the writer’s room, I am sure it will be worth a watch. So go forth, readers. Give yourself a scare.
