When people think of Halloween, they think of fall, candy and costumes. However, when horror movie fans think of Halloween, they think of slasher movies. Slasher horror has been a thing since 1932, the earliest example being Thirteen Women. Throughout the years, more and more slashers became well-known, including Michael Myers (“Halloween”), Jason Vorhees (“Friday the 13th”), and Freddy Krueger (“Nightmare on Elm Street.”) All well-known 80s killers.
The most well-known 90s slasher character is Ghostface, a slasher from the franchise series “Scream.” “Scream” is popular amongst old and new fans. The movie was directed by Wes Craven, who also created Freddy Krueger from “Nightmare on Elm Street.” Craven even briefly appears as Ghostface when the character is hit in the face by Casey Becker (Drew Berrymore) in the movie. He directed the first four before he sadly passed at 76 years old from brain cancer in 2015.
Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter, and Craven made the first movie in 1996. The movie follows a small town called Woodsboro, California. The main character is named Sidney Prescott. She has recently gone through a depressive state because of her mom being killed by a mysterious man that she didn’t know. After that, she and her boyfriend, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), are living an easy life. It is because of her mother’s passing that she is cautious about everything.
The movie starts with a teenage girl, Casey, being home alone and getting a strange call from an unknown man. She is found dead outside her house. The high school that Casey and Sidney go to is filled with news reporters and policemen questioning students who are potential suspects. After that, the audience is introduced to Sidney’s friend group: Tatum Riley, Sidney’s best friend, depicted by Rose McGowan, Tatum’s boyfriend, Stu Macher, portrayed by Matthew Lillard, and horror movie geek, Randy Meeks, who is portrayed by Jamie Kennedy.
The two adult characters are Gale Weathers, a stuck-up news reporter, and Tatum’s older brother Dewey Riley, a police officer helping Sidney. Weathers is played by Courtney Cox, famous for the sitcom “Friends,” and Riley is played by David Arquette.
Most of them speculate that it’s Billy Loomis, Sidney’s boyfriend, because it’s almost always the boyfriend in horror movies. This causes Sidney to freak out when she is home alone and sees Billy Loomis come in with a phone. He was arrested by the police, who suspected him after he went to her house unannounced at night with a phone that the killer is known for.
The people in the group are big horror fans, and they use their knowledge about them to put them into play in their lives. They are being cautious with everyone and everything.
The friend group was invited to a party by Macher in his house, thinking that big groups were going to scare the killer. Billy Loomis was there after being let go from custody. The town is also on curfew now and dismisses the school early.
During the party, the friend group stayed, as well as Gale and Dewey, to see if the killer would show up. But in reality, Gale wanted to get a recording to get her scoop of the story. Meanwhile, Randy is by himself, drunk, watching a movie while sadly Tatum dies via a garage door by the killer. Sidney finds out that Billy is there, and they make up before the killer kills him in front of her. She ran out to warn Gale, but Gale accidentally got into a wreck from Sidney, scaring her by accident. So she ran back to the house to find Dewey walking out and falling from a knife in his back.
Sidney took Dewey’s gun to arm herself and found Randy and Stu begging to have the gun, but she left them and locked the door. She was scared but relieved to find her boyfriend alive. He accidentally fell down the stairs and took the gun from her. He let Randy in and shot him. Sidney was trying to run but was blocked by Stu.
That’s when Sidney finds out that Billy and Stu are the killers. This was a big thing, usually in slasher horror it was always one killer, one person who tormented the victims. But the reason why there were two was because of their motives. Billy and Stu killed Sidney’s mother a year ago. Sidney’s mom had an affair with Billy’s father, causing his mother to leave. This made Billy use his best friend to kill Sidney.
They had a plan to blame Sidney’s dad for the killings because the day they were going to kill Sidney was the day that her mother died a year ago. They planned that her father went on a crazy murder spree and that Stu and Billy were left for dead. The two boys stabbed themselves to give the illusion that Sidney’s father did it. During that, Gale came back and took Dewey’s gun. She aimed it at the two boys until she was knocked out cold. This allowed Sidney to escape. She hid away from the two and called them, basically tormenting them the same way they did with her and their victims. She used the machine that distorted their voices to make fun of them and get into their heads, and it worked.
After calling them, she was able to kill them both. Stu is killed by a TV dropping on his head and bleeding out, and Billy is tackled by Sidney, dressed up as the killer, before being shot by Gale in the shoulder and then by Sidney in the head. The people who survived were Sidney, Randy, Gale, Dewey, and finally, Sidney’s father, Neil Prescott.
The movie became a horror classic and gave horror fans other movies like “Scary Movie.” “Scary Movie” made fun of “Scream” and other horror movies in the 90s like “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” The movie was also based on a real story. Williamson based it on The Gainesville Ripper, also known as Danny Rolling. He started his killing in 1990. This scared Williamson so much that he called his friend to comfort him, and they both started the “What’s your favorite Scary movie?” conversation. The budget for this film was $15 million. Worldwide, the box office return was $173 million.
