10 Ways Scream Changed The Horror Genre Forever

In 1996, Wes Craven destroyed and remade all presumptions about the horror genre with the release of Scream, the iconic slasher that made waves in the industry and evolved into a major franchise. With six movies to date and Scream 7 on the horizon, Scream is one of the longest-running horror movie series ever. However, the effects of Scream were seen in horror movies after only one installment, demonstrating the brilliance of the effective standalone.

Scream famously took on many established horror tropes at a time when the genre was struggling after the best horror movies of the 1980s. Craven created a new, razor-sharp slasher story that was as funny as it was disturbing, revitalizing the genre and making the best horror movies of the 21st century possible. Many modern horror movies and tropes only exist because of Scream, but few live up to this Halloween-primed classic (which ironically came out a few days before Christmas).

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10 Scream’s First Scene Is Electrifying

Scream Raised The Bar For Thrilling Opening Scenes In Horror Movies

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Ironically, Scream is arguably Drew Barrymore’s best horror movie or TV show. Craven knew what he was doing by casting an established actress with significant horror experience in the role of the teenager who would be killed off within the first few minutes of the movie. One of the most famous opening scenes of all time, the deaths of Casey and her boyfriend as a brutal introduction to Ghostface changed the game for how horror movies attempted to hook their audiences from the start.

In addition to the obvious subversion of audience expectations that set Barrymore up to be the main character before her swift murder, Scream set a new standard for electric movie openers. Horror movies should start right away with something shocking, and hopefully clever. The gory and horrifying first scenes of Dog Soldiers and A Quiet Place are prime examples. However, few things are as iconic as “Do you like scary movies?” — a line that changed horror simply by existing.

9 Scream Is Self-Aware About The Horror Genre

Scream Made Metatextuality A Staple Of Horror

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Arguably the most famous way Scream changed the horror genre is through its self-awareness. It brings up the age-old question: “Have people in a horror movie never seen a horror movie?” The characters in Scream know how the horror genre works, something made explicitly clear by them watching Halloween at a party, also one of the most popular horror movies ever made. This made for a bizarre moment of breaking the fourth wall, wholly original at the time.

Related Scream Movies, Ranked From Worst To Best

Ranking the Scream franchise isn’t quite as difficult as answering Ghostface’s movie-related questions, but it comes dangerously close.

Scream addressed this moderate plot hole of the horror genre by lightly making fun of the characters who know what horror movies are but still don’t know that they are in one, making some of the same stupid mistakes. However, it also raises the stakes with Sidney and some others making smarter decisions, but they still can’t escape the danger. Nowadays, some amount of recognition of genre convention by the characters is common in horror, in everything from The Cabin in the Woods to Abigail.

8 Scream Features Two Killers Masquerading As One

Scream Pulled Off Its Famous Plot Twist By Misdirecting With Two Villains

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Scream also threw out an implicit assumption about horror movies that there can only be one killer. The first time around, Scream is a difficult mystery to piece together when it seems like Ghostface can be anywhere. As it turns out, he can’t because the primary killer has an accomplice. This is in addition to other dialogue specifically written to misdirect conclusions about who can be trusted, concealing Scream‘s twist ending.

The problem with opening up the horror genre to multiple killers and intentional misdirection is that audiences begin to assume this too, making plot twists even more challenging to pull off. It is one of the reasons why the movie that did it first is still considered the best example. However, even when horror movies aren’t going for shock value, they have the potential to further explore themes of violence and evil with multiple villains harboring different motives.

7 Scream Dismantles One Of Horror’s Biggest Tropes

Scream Deconstructed The Trope While Explaining It In The Movie Itself

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One of the in-story conversations about the horror genre in Scream is exemplary of arguably the weightiest trope Craven took on. Before Scream, one of the most prevalent tropes in horror was characters implicitly being punished for being sexually active, especially young women. Infidelity and teen sex are two major components of Scream‘s plot, but Sidney isn’t condemned for her sexuality. She is characterized as an intelligent and autonomous person who created a new “Final Girl” standard.

Sidney is conflicted about her mother’s life before her gruesome murder; Scream acknowledges that this woman did make some bad choices, but that this did not warrant what happened to her or her daughter. Meanwhile, the killer who is taking it upon himself to punish her is painted as misguided in his anger. When sexuality continues to be an important theme in horror, Sidney and Craven led the way to it being less judgmental of female characters.

6 Scream Delves Into Real-World Horror

Scream Kicked Off Horror Movies Being Driven By Real Problems

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Aja Romano states (via Vox): “After Scream, movies were free to examine the role horror plays in the real, post-9/11 world.” Aside from the trends of bleak, nihilistic horror Romano outlines in the 2000s, Scream did notably align its horror with grounded problems that audience members might realistically experience. Ghostface arises from conflicts among dysfunctional families, rather than a supernatural, completely impossible source. Subsequent Scream movies continue to derive horror and danger from Ghostface murders becoming increasingly publicized.

Meanwhile, horror movies offering a range of social commentary have become more frequent in Hollywood, with Bong Joon-ho and Jordan Peele being all-star contributors in this regard. Other movies like Promising Young Woman and The Invisible Man call back to the biases in horror Scream deconstructed, giving female characters more agency. These movies and more show how Scream turned horror into an exploration of real fear and monsters.

5 Scream Features Strong Supporting Characters

Scream Rewrote The Horror Genre’s Stock Characters

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One of the tropes Scream adheres to is the cops being essentially useless when the plot would resolve itself too easily if the killer was caught with a simple phone call. Interestingly, Dewey is still a beloved character by Scream fans, who went on to appear in several more movies. The inception of Gale Weathers also made for an interesting addition to the genre, a journalist who has no boundaries and would probably get killed off just for being annoying in an older movie.

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Related What’s on your Scream 7 wishlist?

Now that the release date for Scream 7 has been confirmed, fans are eager to see what the franchise will do next. It’s really easy for big movie franchises to keep recycling old elements or, even worse, somehow fail to connect a new title to past ones. I really hope that Sidney and Gale reunite, and I think it might actually happen, considering both Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox are confirmed to be returning. 

Yet Gale also adds to how Scream changed the depiction of women in horror when she is ambitious and morally gray, but still a character to root for by the end and now one of the series’ biggest stars. Generally speaking, the history of all cinema has been pushing forward the ways different genres showcase more nuanced characters and more complex stories. Scream reworked some of the stock characters of past horror movies for more delightful original content.

4 Scream Is Followed By Many Horror Sequels

Horror Movie Sequels Became More Frequent After Scream

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Horror sequels also became increasingly frequent after Scream. Franchises including Halloween and Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street were already producing sequels when Scream came out, with less impressive results — which Scream itself making fun of them. Halloween II was a major step down, while A Nightmare on Elm Street saw a slow decline before getting some redemption with the meta-take presented in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which led to Scream.

Movie	Release date
Scream	1996
Scream 2	1997
Scream 3	2000
Scream 4	2011
Scream	2022
Scream VI	2023
Scream 7	2026

Halloween made another go of it after Scream, while other horror movies got their chance to be long-running franchises, while older franchises made sequels they might not have otherwise. Movies like Happy Death Day and A Quiet Place might not have once gotten sequels at all, but even one or two additional installments have proved enjoyable. This has also coincided with there being more legacy sequels and spinoffs of all genres in the last 20 years.

3 Scream Nails The Fake-Out Death

Scream Popularized Fake-Out Deaths In Horror

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Scream has also notoriously relied upon fake-out deaths since the beginning for plot twists and suspense. This was not the first time the fake-out death had been used in horror, but it had not been quite accomplished in the same way. With both the story being grounded in reality and other teenagers being killed off unceremoniously throughout the movie, with no option for a return, Billy’s survival came as a true shock.

The prolonged defeat of the villain has always been a way to raise the stakes in a horror movie (something Randy also references), but Scream combined it with its famous villain twist. Many more movies after Scream, including the Scream sequels, used the fake-out death, spurred on by the original as they were in many aspects. Today, it is more difficult to tell if a movie or TV death is real when this is such a widespread trope.

2 Scream Changed The Career Prospects Of Many Actors

New & Old Horror Actors Took On Different Projects Because Of Scream

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In general, Scream revived the horror genre after its slow spell in the early 1990s. This in turn changed the prospects of the biggest horror stars in the business, as well as setting breakout stars like Neve Campbell on a defined career trajectory. Scream changed horror by making Campbell and Courtney Cox staples of the genre while bringing back icons like Jamie Lee Curtis, who returned to the Halloween franchise shortly after Scream.

There is no way of knowing what the horror genre would look like today without Scream, but its success may have also contributed to stars like Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega being able to establish themselves in the industry through their association with scary stories. Scream both engaged with past horror stars like Curtis and Barrymore while making Campbell and Skeet Ulrich famous — who also starred together in The Craft in 1996.

1 Scream’s Killer Could Be Anyone

Scream Notably Changed Things Up With A Human Killer

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Scream‘s most distinct trope: anyone can be the killer. The famous horror movies of the 1980s were often supernatural, with otherworldly and horrifically magical killers. Scream changed that by having Ghostface revealed in the end to be just a regular person, driven by anger and grief. The killer is just one of Sidney’s peers, and that influenced many horror movies going forward.

Related Every Person Who Played Ghostface In Scream

Scream introduced a horror icon with Ghostface. Which characters in the franchise have worn the Ghostface mask over the 5 movies and TV show?

By setting this precedent, Scream allowed for many more realistic horror stories that could technically actually happen, making them even scarier. Going hand in hand with its commentary on reality and trope deconstruction, everyman killers allowed for deeper thematic exploration in horror movies. Few movies since Scream have changed the horror genre in the same way, which gave rise to some of the most iconic moments in any slasher movie and features still impressive metatextual material.

Source: Vox

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9.6/10 Scream RCrimeHorrorMystery

Wes Craven flips the horror-slasher genre on its head with the 1996 release of Scream, the first in the long-running franchise. The residents of Woodsboro discover a series of murders are being committed by a dangerous ghost mask-wearing killer with an obsession for classic horror movies. To survive, a group of high school students, a reporter, and a town deputy will have to subvert horror expectations and stay one step ahead of the killer.

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*Availability in US Director Wes Craven Release Date December 20, 1996 Studio(s) Woods Entertainment Writers Kevin Williamson Cast Drew Barrymore , Kevin Patrick Walls , David Booth , Carla Hatley , Neve Campbell , Skeet Ulrich Runtime 111 minutes Franchise(s) Scream Sequel(s) Scream 2 , Scream 3 , Scream 4 , Scream (2022) , Scream 6 Expand

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Category: Entertainment