#14 - Scream (1996)
(dir. Wes Craven)
Every time I watch this movie, I find something new to love about it. It's absolutely chock full of references to other slasher films, especially Psycho and Halloween, and shows a lot of love for the genre while also making fun of its tropes and cliches. It often gets credited as the first self-aware horror film, but Craven did something similar two years earlier with his New Nightmare, where Freddy becomes "real" and terrorizes the cast and crew of the latest NOES film. Scream does a whole lot more with the concept though, and manages to succeed as both a brilliant thriller and a commentary on the genre itself.
The opening scene ("Do you like scary movies?") could be taken by itself as a stand-alone short film - if there was ever a perfect sequence in a slasher film, it is this one. Craven pulls the same bait-and-switch trick that Hitchcock did in Psycho, letting us know that all bets are off (today it might be called the "Game of Thrones effect"). But, are they? The rest of the film does follow the rules for the most part, even as it deconstructs them. Because didn't Casey do everything right? She locked all the doors and windows, armed herself (sort of), and chose to run out the front door instead of up the stairs (which Sidney is forced to do only a few scenes later)... but it didn't matter and she dies anyway, because horror movies cheat. Even though the characters know the rules, it doesn't help them. Even Randy, the biggest expert on horror in the film, yells at the characters in Halloween to turn around, but doesn't do it himself.
This might be my favorite slasher of all time. It's like the culmination of the genre - if Halloween is the Stagecoach of slashers, then this is The Searchers. An absolutely brilliant film that is essential viewing for any film fan.
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