#1 Hoop-tober 3.0

Firstly, I have to say I watched this yesterday then felt so guilty I decided to wait til today to review it, but my God, what a good way to start! This film is so fucking fantastic!

The line that horror-comedy is so thin I'm amazed anyone would try to balance on it, but Wes Craven fucking nailed it. This film is great - not wet-your-pants scary, but not meant to be either. It still provides a good few chills while also managing to be the singular most successful piece of metacinema I've seen. God, this film could only have been made this successfully with a great deal of love for the genre, and I'm so glad it was.

The opening scene is simply brilliant. It manages to perfectly initiate the tone of the film (witty and yet a bit creepy) while also subverting horror norms and poking fun at the clichés of the genre.

I also really appreciated the heroine, Sidney Prescott. While the film makes fun of many things, Sidney's trauma is treated as real. She may participate in the staging of jokes, but her pain is never anything but legitimate: the film doesn't sell itself, or it's heroine, out for a cheap gag.

The final scenes left me gasping in shock and also in joy - this film is pure pleasure (and also, I mean, the "Wes Carpenter" joke! Reader, I screamed!)