Scream (1996)
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Drew Barrymore
Director: Wes Craven
Synopsis: Roller-coaster ride of a homage to the slasher genre of the 80's
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

Here is the film that revived the dormant slasher genre and breathed life into a stale and fatigued chapter that had been lying in the doldrums ever since Nightmare on Elm Street way back in 1985 or so. Scream is in essence a loving homage to all those great stalk n slash movies that an entire generation grew up watching in the early 80's. The homage is to a genre in general but to one film within that genre in particular; John Carpenter's amazing classic Halloween. This film looks up to Halloween for inspiration and ends up being rather an inspired effort itself.

The opening scene featuring Drew Barrymore is now legendary horror stuff and those with the unrated laser disc version will get a precious second or two of the dangling body more than those with just the DVD. There is little that we can add to the heaps that has already been said about the opening scene or indeed the film itself. We can just chime in that it certainly does get those prickly hairs standing to attention. It's a wonderful, tremendously dramatic opening, one from which the film never lets up.

The plot borrows from classic 80's slasher fare, but incorporates it quite brilliantly into its own story. There is a fiendish killer marauding around this small community, murdering innocent young people who fall foul of the "rules" laid down by slasher films of the 80's. It's a novel twist on the old stalk and slash tale and is done with plenty of visual style and terrific sense of humour by Craven who in turn must give credit to Kevin Williamson, the script writer who has done a superb job. His script breathes life into the characters and lends the film a cutting edge and vitality and dare we say intelligence which was not a commodity commonly found within 80's slasher fare.

Unlike their 80's role model's the kids in Scream are well aware of what happens in those "masked psycho on the loose" movies from the 80's. Its slasher mayhem paced at breakneck speed and written by a devoted genre buff. The film scares, shocks and entertains in equal measure and has made stars of virtually all its attractive cast. However this isn't quite a Halloween for the next generation because it simply isn't nearly enough!