{"id":440169,"date":"2026-02-22T20:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T20:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/440169\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T20:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T20:26:07","slug":"scream-1996-flashback-review-ign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/440169\/","title":{"rendered":"Scream (1996) Flashback Review – IGN"},"content":{"rendered":"

It recently occurred to us that IGN\u2019s only been around for 30 years<\/a>. Movies, on the other hand, have been around for a lot longer than that, and so many of them have never been reviewed by IGN. So in the interest of remedying that, frankly, horrific oversight, here comes our first Flashback Review.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re starting with director Wes Craven\u2019s genre-revitalizing, franchise-spawning, meta teen-slasher, Scream<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scream was released in 1996, making it 30 years old today, the age over which we\u2019re supposed to stop trusting people<\/a>. As one of the most influential horror films of all time, with more ink spilled online about it than blood spilled on screen, it\u2019s a strange thing for the movie to not have an official score here at IGN. As an exercise, it\u2019s just as strange to go back and review a film with the kind of legacy Scream enjoys today. So, for at least this first part, I\u2019m just going to pretend that it\u2019s 1996.<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton just won the election for his second term in office, Toni Braxton\u2019s \u201cUn-Break My Heart\u201d is at the top of the charts and Wes Craven kind of needs a win. He\u2019s coming off of Vampire in Brooklyn which was and, frankly always will be, considered a big ol\u2019 flop. New Nightmare<\/a> was just before that, and showed Craven\u2019s willingness to break the fourth wall, or at minimum it showed an understanding that it needed to be broken. It\u2019s telling that contemporary reviews of that film largely considered it a self-reflective breath of fresh air in a tired franchise. By and large in the mid \u201990s, the bloom was to some degree off the horror movie rose.<\/p>\n

So here comes Scream, a meta-commentary on the entire genre. It\u2019s doing all the things we loved about slasher movies in the \u201970s and \u201980s and also making fun of them, but also it\u2019s made by the guy that made most of those tropes famous in the first place with films like Last House on the Left<\/a>, The Hills Have Eyes<\/a> and, most iconically, A Nightmare on Elm Street<\/a>. All this adds up to Scream having its cake and eating it too. And it all starts with 13 of the best opening minutes a horror fan could ask for.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an argument to be made that puts the opening sequence of Scream up there with the best in film history, not just horror. It would have been a legendary short film if there hadn\u2019t been a whole movie attached to the back of it. It all at once played the hits (preying on youthful fears of being home alone and getting a call from a stranger) and modernized the discourse (quizzing Drew Barrymore\u2019s panicked Casey Becker with a gotcha question about Jason Voorhees\u2019 mom).<\/p>\n

The camera work is brilliant as well, floating around the house, subtly tilted and stalking Casey with a slow, controlled steadicam. It pushes into a close-up to punctuate the more frightened beats of her performance instead of always cutting to those close-ups. The edit is just as deliberate, patiently waiting for the right moment to attack, exactly like the actual killer is doing outside. Barrymore plays her fear with a bit of disbelief, her panic with a little anger, while Roger L. Jackson, as the voice on the phone, shifts gears from playful and sexy to deranged and dangerous as he toys with her.<\/p>\n

And then she dies.<\/p>\n

After being front and center in the marketing, that Drew Barrymore doesn\u2019t make it out of the first scene is wild, but it\u2019s just part of Craven and Williamson\u2019s scheme. \u201c<\/p>\n

After being front and center in the marketing, that Drew Barrymore doesn\u2019t make it out of the first scene is wild, but it\u2019s just part of Craven and writer Kevin Williamson\u2019s scheme. This opening creates a world that both loves the same movies we do, while deftly crafting a thrilling environment where anybody could be killed next.<\/p>\n

Being denied one of the most recognizable faces from the poster for the subsequent runtime, the rest of the film is carried by an ensemble. TV stars Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox head up a group of young actors with plenty to prove on the big screen, but David Arquette\u2019s Deputy Dewey might be the key to the whole thing. While most of the cast capably play their roles as \u201cbest friend\u201d or \u201cred herring\u201d or \u201cgeeky off-to-the-side guy,\u201d Dewey is a meek older brother, in over his head as a police officer trying desperately to be taken seriously (you could even say he\u2019s trying to play against type). In a movie where subversion of expectations is the whole point, Arquette\u2019s fledgling lawman embodies that theme better than anybody else on screen.<\/p>\n

He also speaks to the true and lasting brilliance of this movie, if I can flash-forward back to the present day. The balance of comedy, horror and self-awareness created by Craven and Williamson is Scream\u2019s real gift to cinema. It gave us a film that\u2019s a blast to watch, yes, but that formula hides all manner of sins in a way that keeps the movie from feeling dated. Cordless landline phones and Blockbuster videos are quintessentially \u201990s, but they don\u2019t make the movie any less relevant 30 years later. Now, had the filmmakers not doused Scream with a self-referential bucket of meta corn syrup, the movie would have fallen into the same traps that had the genre gasping for its last breaths in the mid-\u201990s, and been more dated than any number of VHS tapes or Tori Spelling references could manage.<\/p>\n

Scream By the NumbersScream (1996): $173,046,663Scream 2 (1997): $172,363,301Scream 3 (2000): $161,834,276Scream 4 (2011): $97,231,420Scream (2022): $137,743,924Scream VI (2023): $166,577,232<\/p>\n

Worldwide box office for the Scream franchise (via Box Office Mojo<\/a>).<\/p>\n

There are dangling logic threads to pull on, like how did one of the two killers sneak into the principal\u2019s office to murder Henry Winkler? Ditto for Ghostface suddenly appearing in a garage that we\u2019ve seen every corner of. And how is at least one of them not covered in beer for the rest of the night after being hit in the face and crotch with full bottles at glass-shattering force? Why is that garage door opener so damn powerful, anyway!?<\/p>\n

Most of these questions only arise in repeat viewings. It isn\u2019t until you know the ending and watch it again that you might even ask things like that, nor would you even bother with those questions if you\u2019re charmed by the rest of the film. Ghostface is behind that door because that\u2019s an effective jumpscare for us, the audience, not because it makes any sort of logistical sense in the space and time of Woodsboro. But thanks to the simple fact that these tropes are spelled out and on the nose, Scream gets away with it because that\u2019s precisely the thing it\u2019s making fun of.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most obvious beneficiary of this is Skeet Ulrich\u2019s Billy. As one half of the movie\u2019s central romantic pair, we meet him as he sneaks into Sidney\u2019s room to guilt her into having sex. He holds it against her throughout the film, gaslighting her in moments of real distress and ultimately manipulating her into sleeping with him by the end. The guy is a dirtbag and, with 30 years and who knows how many repeat viewings later, it\u2019s a damn good thing he turned out to be the killer.<\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a>Courteney Cox, Jamie Kennedy and Neve Campbell.<\/p>\n

But the tone of Scream, the meta-awareness created by Craven and Williamson, is responsible for smoothing that part of the story over to the point that we still talk so lovingly about this movie. This plot would ultimately be pretty forgettable if Scream didn\u2019t have \u201cyeah, that\u2019s what we\u2019re making fun of\u201d to fall back on.<\/p>\n

In fact, the whodunnit aspect of the film is probably its weakest element. The red herrings get presented and tossed away right on schedule, characters get killed off in a predictable order (Drew Barrymore\u2019s early exit notwithstanding) and all the tropes that ought to be in a thriller are dutifully present. Ultimately, one could argue that\u2019s a feature, not a bug, and probably be right considering the way each of those tropes is undermined. However, the story of Sidney\u2019s mom and infidelity and the anger a high school boy feels about it (and if you don\u2019t remember what I\u2019m talking about here, that\u2019s exactly my point) is very much not what\u2019s so iconic about the movie.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the idea behind doing these Flashback Reviews as well. How was the movie received in its original context and how much has time changed its perception? In Scream\u2019s case, with six sequels and three seasons of a TV show out there still slashing, the Scream clones of the late \u201990s hot-teen slasher spree, and an entire franchise built around the film\u2019s spoof, it\u2019s hard to understate the impact this movie has had on the zeitgeist. Where meta-slashers are concerned, they did it first and they did it best. Craven and Williamson may well have pulled the ladder up behind them after Scream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It recently occurred to us that IGN\u2019s only been around for 30 years. Movies, on the other hand,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-440169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}