It's a scream, baby!

It is Scream, and boy do I love it. This is that movie for me, the one that I think is brilliant and entertaining and hands-down amazing. The one I can tell you a bunch of random trivia about. The one I can quote word for word. The one I will analyze to the ends of the earth. The one I will, never, ever get tired of watching.

What's the point? They're all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It's insulting.

You've got your slasher flicks that follow tropes to a T (I Know What You Did Last Summer). You've got your full-on horror parodies (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil). And then you've got Scream, a meticulously crafted film from horror-master Wes Craven that manages to follow tropes while perfectly satirizing them. Every character, every plot development, is simultaneously a stereotype and its exact opposite at the same time.

There are SO many small details and references in Scream it's astounding. Here's one that I just caught this time (on my umpteenth viewing): Throughout the final act, Halloween is shown playing on TV. Sydney crashes the TV onto the killer's head right as the screen is showing Laurie defeating Michael Myers! The parallelism!

This movie is so self-aware it's BONKERS.

Movies make psychos more creative!

In the end, this is a movie about movies. Horror movies - their violence, their cliches, their indescribable enjoyment factor - are what Wes Craven both attacks and embodies in the Scream trilogy (and YES, it is a trilogy). Horror movies are shit on a lot, for good reason, but they've also produced some of history's greatest films. They speak to the emotion of fear - an emotion so primal, so embedded in the core of our being - that when they're done well (and they can be done well), it's some powerful filmmaking.

It's Scream, baby!