To mark the twentieth anniversary of Wes Craven’s game-changing slasher, Scream, Wicked Horror presents a week of specially-themed content celebrating the movie’s enduring appeal. In this installment, Fox Emm discusses how the seminal horror flick introduced – or rather, re-introduced – audiences to three notable genres in one fell swoop.
The first “horror”-esque movie I ever saw was M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs – although I can vaguely recall being startled by the jump scares, the cheesy Mel Gibson lines (cackling at the bit where former priest Graham Hess (played by Gibson) declares “I am losing my mind” entertained me for days) took me out of it somewhat. Of course, Signs insisted it was a sci-fi thriller, so I didn’t think I had seen a proper horror movie until I saw Scream later that same year.
Scream had it all as far as nineties horror was concerned. There were plenty of attractive high school kids, the cautionary tale trope, which warned about the dangers of premarital sex, drinking, along with anything and everything else that high school kids in movies would do to have a good time. Scream had mass appeal. Looking at the box office stats alone we know that. It drew in audiences by blending a myriad of genres and by utilizing both well-known and unknown actors.
Now you may have noted that Signs was released in 2002. That means I saw Scream a whopping six years later than many of those reading this. I wasn’t allowed to watch anything my mother christened a “scary movie”. That meant I didn’t get to watch 90s horror flicks until they were well on their way to being classics.
I share this little tidbit not because I want to take a stroll down memory lane, but because by reminding myself that I saw Scream SIX YEARS after its debut I’m also reminded of the fact it still had the power to draw me down the horror rabbit hole, never to return, when it had already been out for the best part of a decade. But it also re-introduced us to a couple of other genres, too, in the process:
Horror
Mystery-Thriller
Black Comedy