Scream (1996)
Average Rating: 7.1/10
Reviews Counted: 60
Fresh: 50 | Rotten: 10
A great mixed of bone chilling suspense and witty dialogues.
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Critic Reviews: 17
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 4
A great mixed of bone chilling suspense and witty dialogues.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 440,198
My Rating
Movie Info
Scream is at once a slasher film and a tongue-in-cheek position paper on the "dead teenagers" movies of the late 1970s/early 1980s that plays as half-parody, half-tribute. Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is having a rough time lately: she's still getting over the brutal rape and murder of her mother a year ago, and now one of her friends (Drew Barrymore) has been killed by a lunatic who harassed her with terrifying phone calls, then stabbed her to death while wearing a Halloween costume. Soon
Dec 20, 1996 Wide
Dec 2, 1997
Miramax Films
Watch It Now
Cast
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Neve Campbell
Sidney Prescott -
Liev Schreiber
Cotton Weary -
Courteney Cox
Gale Weathers -
David Arquette
Dewey Riley -
Skeet Ulrich
Billy Loomis -
Rose McGowan
Tatum Riley -
Jamie Kennedy
Randy Meeks -
Matthew Lillard
Stuart -
Drew Barrymore
Casey Becker -
Henry Winkler
Principal Himbry -
Troy Bishop
Expelled Kid -
Linda Blair
Reporter -
W. Earl Brown
Kenny -
Lawrence Hecht
Neal Prescott -
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Scream Trailer & Photos
All Critics (60) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (51) | Rotten (10) | DVD (20)
The pic's chills are top-notch, but its underlying mockish tone won't please die-hard fans.
The assumption that there's something inherently clever about a slasher movie making reference to both its genre and the filmmaking process is a fundamental flaw of this tiresome, blood-filled comedy.
At last, a horror movie to shout about!
Top CriticTurns slasher flicks into slapstick.
The best fright fest of the '90s.
A bravura, provocative sendup of horror pictures that's also scary and gruesome yet too swift-moving to lapse into morbidity.
Remains a highly polished piece of meta-slasher mayhem.
...a fun, well-paced slasher...
Maybe not the first metamovie, but certainly the one that popularized the genre.
Graphic mystery-homage to teen-slasher movies.
Once all pretense and self-congratulatory winks to the audience have finished, the climax pretty much goes on auto-drive relying on the basic slasher fare...
Self-knowing badness is in fact badness; it might actually be worse than just regular old badness because it is, in addition to everything else, smug.
A pointedly knowledgeable, frequently funny satire on slasher conventions and a terrifically scary, joyously suspenseful horror picture.
It's not stupid, it's not wussy and it pulls off a couple of pretty nasty jolts.
Fans of the genre can enjoy the way it plays with horror's conventions. Others can just chew their fingers in fright.
Witty, tightly structured, and often effective as a straight horror film.
Ironically, the predictability is actually one of the film's virtues.
A fun, scary and entertaining movie
Its commercial success was well-justified.
Audience Reviews for Scream
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Gale Weathers: If I'm right about this, I could save a mans life. Do you know what that would do for my book sales?
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- Randy Meeks: Did the police ask if you liked to hunt?
- Tatum Riley: Why would they do that? They didn't ask me.
- Stuart: Because there's no way a girl could have killed them.
- Tatum Riley: That is so sexist. The killer could have easily been a female. Basic Instinct.
- Stuart: That was an ice pick, not exactly the same thing.
- Stuart: Yeah, Casey and Steve were completely hollowed out. In fact,it takes a man to do something like that.
- Tatum Riley: Or a man's mentality.
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- Gale Weathers: Looks like we've got a serial killer on our hands!
- Dewey Riley: Well, a 'serial killer' is not really accurate. Gotta knock off a couple more to get that title.
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- Stuart: Why would he want to kill his own girlfriend?
- Randy Meeks: There's always some stupid bullshit reason to kill your girlfriend. That's the beauty of it all! Simplicity! Besides, if it gets too complicated, you lose your target audience.
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- Randy Meeks: [staring at Billy Loomis in the videostore] If you were the only suspect in a senseless bloodbath - would you be standing in the horror section?
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- Sidney Prescott: Why? Why did you kill my mother?
- Billy Loomis: You hear that Stu? I think she wants a motive. Well I don't really believe in motives Sid, I mean did Norman Bates have a motive?
- Stuart: No.
- Billy Loomis: Did we ever find out why Hannibal Lector liked to eat people? DON'T THINK SO. See it's a lot scarier when there's no motive.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Obviously one of the best influential, modern, meta horror movie ever created? | 37 days ago | 1 |
Latest News on Scream
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July 15, 2009:
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June 9, 2009:
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The Scream movies are some of my favorite Wes Craven films. The movie was refreshing because to be honest, there are way to many remakes and way to many movies that are just stupid.This film was such a great relief to know that great slasher flicks could still be made. It had everything you would want in a slasher. A great cast, it was funny, had great suspense throughout, great plot, and a smart way of making fun of itself and all other great scary flicks. Which is why Randy is my favorite character in this movie. He gives all the warnings in scary movies. Verbally states them and then you see the other characters doing the things he had just said not to do. I just think the movie and the ones that followed it are great. If you haven't seen them then you most definitely need to. Even after it being so long since the movie has been made and knowing what happens, I still found myself jumping at some of the scenes and found the movie to still be as intense as the first time I had watched it. Just a great movie.. See it if you haven't."