Scream (1996)

Scream is a 1996 American slasher film directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. The film follows Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, a teenager in the fictional town of Woodsboro who is targeted by Ghostface, a masked killer who torments victims with phone calls quizzing them about horror movies before attacking. One year after the murder of Sidney's mother, the killings begin again, and everyone in Sidney's circle — including her boyfriend Billy, played by Skeet Ulrich, her best friend Tatum, played by Rose McGowan, and tabloid reporter Gale Weathers, played by Courteney Cox — becomes a suspect.

Scream saved the slasher genre from irrelevance by simultaneously honoring and satirizing its conventions. Kevin Williamson's screenplay was revolutionary in its self-awareness — the characters had seen the same horror movies as the audience and explicitly discussed the "rules" of surviving a slasher film, yet this meta-awareness didn't protect them from genuine danger. The opening sequence, in which Drew Barrymore's character is terrorized and killed despite being the film's apparent star, shattered audience expectations and established that no one was safe.

Wes Craven's direction balanced the comedy of genre deconstruction with genuinely effective horror. Scream earned $173 million worldwide on a $15 million budget and single-handedly revived the slasher genre.