Review of Scream (1996) by Movieznp — 15 Oct 2020

Pure brilliance! That's what this movie is. Not only it's a modern day classic, it's almost a perfect film. It serves as a slasher flick, a perfect blend of slasher and whodunit, an excellent thriller and an extremely exciting rollercoaster ride. In my opinion, Scream and Scream 2 are better than his most popular movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street. No, I don't hate original Freddy movie, I consider it to be one of the bests of the genre. But I find Scream way beyond that. It might possibly be because I am more into thrillers, murder mysteries and whodunits, but that doesn't change the fact that I find Scream to be Wes Craven's greatest work.

There are a lot of goods I have say about this movie, and I won't be spoiling anything. All these stuffs aren't probably things that have not been already said prior to my review. But these are the reasons why I love it so much. First, it's extremely well-paced. It has a definitive tone it goes for, any doesn't miss a bit at all. It is almost two hours long, it begins to end at around 1:30:00 mark. The last 30 minutes doesn't even feel like 30 minutes. It's almost like 5 or 6 minutes, and I am not even exaggerating. There's not a single moment in the movie which doesn't give an uneasy feeling. That uneasy feeling lasts throughout the movie, until things start getting revealed. And after that, what follows is an intense, action packed finale that the movie absolutely deserves. And I almost forgot. The opening of this movie is perhaps the best opening of all the slasher films since the late 70s. .

Even if it wasn't a meta film, except for a few interesting pop culture references, it would've worked equally well. That's because it has a story of it's own. You are constantly gripped by the whodunit aspect of the movie. It completely understands that it's actually the intensity, the tension and the characterizations you give in the film that makes it work, not some pointless gory scenes. The.

Gore and kills are mere aftermath and payoff of what we had just witnessed in the story. Gore doesn't equal a great horror, and in particular, a great slasher. Seems like this film understood it really well. And there's something that this movie does, which none of the slashers before it and (except for a little extent in Scream 2) none of its sequels do. That is getting the uncertainty factor absolutely right. Definitely, I would say none of the endings of the Scream movies (1 to 4, at the time of this review) were quite predictable to me. But, even in the beloved classics, except for a possible few dodges, we get to know who the main lead is and who's going to be the victim. It's not that with Scream. At many moments, even though we recognize the main lead (who's awesome, btw) we feel like she might not make it. And, definitely a lot of people are sliced. But, we do not, or should I say, cannot expect a character to die or not to die because it plays the trope of "everyone is a suspect" extremely well. .

This movie has the best batch of characters in any slasher movie. All the characters are so memorable and the characterizations are brilliant. You cannot exchange one character with the other. There are no stock characters for extra kills or something like that. Every kill happens for a purpose, may it have a motive or may it be an act of a pure psychopath. And in that line, I would also like to mention that Neve Campbell is my most favorite actress (and Sidney Prescott is my favorite slasher lead character) when it comes to the ones who've been the lead of a slasher movie. Unlike a lot of such leads, she doesn't feel like a "typically written to survive" lead. She has more depth to her character than many of the leads from many different franchises combined! She does a lot of stuff that kinda reminds me of John McClane. She definitely does whole lot less of over the top things that McClane does, but she does have some great one liners, fantastic fight/action scenes and the vulnerability that makes us feel that she's one of us, and not a movie character. That being said, the performances are extremely great. Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers, David Arquette as Dewey, Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) as Stu, and Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis and all the others have given a fantastic performance. .

It's a movie which doesn't use its meta nature as an excuse for being lame, in fact, it's everything but lame. Being a meta movie, it serves as a celebration of almost two decades of slasher films by taking jabs on cliches while using that cliche in a much more grounded way. It gives a well written story and a whole bunch of well written characters and an intensely exciting storytelling. That's what makes it so great. If you haven't checked it out, don't waste any time. Please, see this movie. It's a highly underappreciated (though insanely popular) and a criminally underrated gem of a movie. .

.