I’m on a hunt for the scariest movies of all time! I’ll be looking at films of any era, from any country, and then reviewing them based solely on how terrifying they are.

If you have a suggestion for a horror movie, please let me know on Twitter.

Please be advised, spoilers may lie ahead!!

Scream (1996)

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette

A few short days ago, we dipped our toes into the slasher realm with a festive viewing of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. In the lede, I alluded to the notion that modern thrillers are typified by their tongue-in-cheek, self-aware tone, a trend that has been ongoing for decades now.

One such film that helped to define this concept was the seminal Scream, courtesy of everyone’s favourite creepy old scare uncle, Wes Craven. In a genre at risk of going stale, its quirky, irreverent style became a template that others still follow to this day.

In the same way that The Exorcist dropped around Christmas, December also marks the anniversary of Ghost Face and company. So let’s get merry, let’s get bloody, and let’s see if Scream is in fact a scary movie (pun intended).

To kick things off, Scream toys with our suppositions coming right out of the gates. Drew Barrymore is perfectly cast as the unfortunate first victim, Casey Becker, in so many ways. Her performance is gripping and tragic, and of course, she was billed on all of the promotional material as the lead character and indeed, was originally slated to play eventual leading lady, Sidney Prescott.

Because of her star power, we are lulled into a false sense of security in the opening sequence, allowing us to become invested in the proceedings. Ghost Face’s initial phone call has become cinematic legend, the kind of directorial masterclass that most of us recall beat for beat by now. Trying to put yourself in the mindset of a first-time viewer in 1996, however, you begin to recall just how disturbing it is.

It feels practical and grounded; the kind of urban legend that could have feasibly happened to any of us. As he toys with his prey — thanks in no small part to Roger L. Jackson’s commanding voice performance — there is a growing sense of unease before he finally reveals his true menace, butchering Casey while she cries out to her parents in vain.

It builds suspense, subverts our expectations, and then closes with a truly grisly sight. The shot of Casey’s corpse hanging from the tree is downright chilling, and far more effective than blatant gross-out horror films. Then, there’s a smash cut, and Scream begins in earnest. It doesn’t ever get quite that horrifying again, but it doesn’t particularly need to, because overall I would say it is more funny than scary, by design.

From here on, the goal of Scream’s narrative is to create intrigue around the mystery of Ghost Face’s true identity, an effective whodunnit tinged with the glimmer of 90s teen heartthrobs. Rewatching the film for the umpteenth time, you grow to appreciate all of the red herrings thrown in our way, but without the knowledge of the eventual reveal, we aren’t exactly sure what this villain is capable of.

He looks and feels like some kind of menacing boogeyman, and there could be anyone underneath that mask. The fact that he’s actually quite fallible — constantly getting his ass kicked in the process of securing the kill — does decrease his scare factor somewhat. But it gives us a false sense of hope that maybe this secondary character is going to make it out alive, and rarer still, we actually wouldn’t mind seeing several of them survive.

I’ve made allusions in the past (most recently in the aforementioned Thanksgiving) that likeable protagonists helps to add a sense of dread in their pursuit, and Scream has this aspect down in spades. Neve Campbell capably helms the ship as Sidney, acting as a grounding force to the many chaotic elements around her, from her peppy best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan) to the suspicious dweeb Randy (Jamie Kennedy).

I don’t want to drift too much into actual review territory here, but allow me to reaffirm how glorious the twist at the end is. We’re presented with the notion that her boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich) is the likeliest suspect, only for his airtight alibi to create a sense of doubt. Then at the end, boom, he was the baddie after all… but so was the resident goofball, Stu (Matthew Lillard).

It’s all such good shit, and I would happily watch a spinoff buddy film of Billy and Stu where Lillard is never given a script and just has to make shit up for the entire duration. But that’s the thing, you see. Scream’s main goal is to be just that: a good movie. Its balance of light and dark is meant to keep us on the edge of our seats from a storytelling standpoint, and the murder scenes are more played for thrills than chills.

There are some minor jump scares peppered throughout, many of which come courtesy of the bumbling deputy Dewey (Arquette), but never enough to elicit more than a gasp from nervous viewers. This isn’t a particularly graphic film, either, with the most alarming visual being Tatum’s wildly inappropriate wardrobe choices.

Ultimately, because this movie is both a loving tribute to the thriller genre while also serving as a statement about its predictability, it offers tropes and twists in equal measure. Even if the Casey Becker fake-out scene caught you by surprise the first time, you’ll be conditioned for subsequent Ghost Face phone calls, making them exhilarating, but not entirely frightening anymore.

All this goes to say, Scream is hard for me to judge in a vacuum. It was a revelation of its time that has aged majestically, but I simply cannot put myself in the mindset of someone watching this with fresh eyes. This is especially true now that the franchise has grown into slasher royalty, with six entries, a television series, and Ghost Face feeling right at home as a killer in Dead by Daylight.

It’s a classic to be sure, another must-watch I’ve covered for this column alongside The Exorcist. But we can’t just hand out paws all willy-nilly(-Billy). Were it not for the gruesome impact of its opening, I could potentially even say it’s not scary at all, so with that in mind, it’s perhaps best to score it conservatively.

Final Verdict

Unless you’re particularly squeamish, you’re not likely to get many screams from Scream. Even if you’re caught off-guard, it will surely just be one of those tiny little squeals that you immediately laugh at yourself for afterwards. Sound fun? Perfect, it should, this is a fun movie — and a very good one, at that.

It would be practically impossible to find someone who doesn’t at least have a cursory knowledge of its contents nearly 30 years later, but gosh, I would really love to see their reaction if they were to exist. I can never quite know how scary I would really find Scream in 2024, so this rating will always be just a little bit tainted by familiarity.