When Scream slashed its way into theaters in December 1996, the horror genre was a bloated corpse of its former self. Slashers, once revolutionary in the late ’70s and early ’80s, had been reduced to formulaic gore-fests. The tropes were tired, the killers predictable, and the final girls were either virginal stereotypes or so thinly written they barely registered. Horror had become a punchline, relegated to direct-to-video shelves and late-night cable marathons. Then Wes Craven, the man responsible for A Nightmare on Elm Street, teamed up with screenwriter Kevin Williamson and decided to hold up a mirror to the genre and ask, “Aren’t we better than this?”
Scream wasn’t just a horror movie. It was horror about horror. A film that dissected its own genre while reveling in it. The characters in Scream weren’t just victims—they were fans. They had seen the movies. They knew the rules. Don’t say “I’ll be right back.” Don’t have sex. Don’t assume the killer’s dead when you’ve stabbed them once. The brilliance of Scream was that it operated on two levels. On the surface, it was a sharp, slick, genuinely scary slasher. Underneath, it was a love letter to the genre that had raised so many of us on VHS tapes and popcorn-fueled sleepovers.
From its unforgettable cold open with Drew Barrymore—a scene that made every viewer rethink their landline—to its climactic third-act twist, Scream didn’t just play with expectations, it weaponized them. Craven and Williamson knew the audience thought they were smarter than the average slasher. So they made a movie that was smarter than the audience. And it worked. Oh, did it work.
What made Scream revolutionary wasn’t just its meta-awareness. It was how grounded it felt. The killer wasn’t some supernatural force or a silent maniac in a jumpsuit. It was two teenagers who were just bored and broken enough to think murder might be fun. The scariest thing about Ghostface wasn’t the mask or the voice—it was the banality of evil underneath. Billy and Stu were charming, funny, even likable. And that made them so much more terrifying.
But let’s not pretend Scream is without flaws. Its treatment of trauma, particularly in the case of Sidney Prescott, sometimes slips into exploitation. There’s a voyeuristic edge to how her grief and loss are used to build tension, especially around her mother’s murder and sexual reputation. For a movie so self-aware, it doesn’t always give its female lead the agency she deserves in the first half. Thankfully, Sidney’s arc throughout the franchise evolves, and she becomes one of the most resilient, complex heroines in horror—but Scream 1 sometimes fumbles that ball.
Then there’s the tone, which for all its cleverness, occasionally undercuts its own stakes. There are moments where the movie can’t decide whether it wants you to scream, laugh, or roll your eyes. And depending on your tolerance for late-’90s irony, that tonal tightrope can feel a bit wobbly. But honestly? That’s part of the charm. Scream didn’t just ask us to love horror again. It invited us to laugh with it, cringe with it, and yell at the screen when the characters made stupid decisions—because they knew better, and we did too.
And the influence? Unmatched. In the years after Scream, horror had a full-blown renaissance. We got copycats (Urban Legend, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Valentine)—some decent, many not—but the genre had new life. Studios realized there was a smart, savvy, hungry audience ready for horror that respected their intelligence. It paved the way for the likes of Final Destination, The Faculty, and even later evolutions like The Cabin in the Woods and It Follows. You don’t get Get Out without Scream. You don’t get Hereditary without someone first breaking the fourth wall and saying, “This is how this works.”
And now, decades later, Scream is still going. Multiple sequels, a reboot that nods to “elevated horror,” and a fandom that refuses to die. Because underneath the satire, the cleverness, and the gallons of blood, Scream is a story about survival—about what it means to live through fear and come out the other side smarter, stronger, and still swinging.
In many ways, it mirrors us. The fans who grew up watching it. The kids who needed horror to make sense of a chaotic world. The ones who learned, through Sidney and Gale and even Dewey, that sometimes the rules don’t protect you, but knowing them helps you fight smarter.
So yeah, Scream revitalized horror. But more than that, it reminded us why we love it in the first place.
Because sometimes you just need to scream—and be heard.