Njabs Phungula’s review published on Letterboxd:
I've been watching Scream from a distance for many years now. When this film made its big (and bloody) splash way back when, I was only 3 years old but when I was old enough to go out to my local video store to rent movies, there it was. The king of the horror movie section. Always. As a result, I see a huge 90s sign written across every frame of this movie because it is so representative of that period. I'm surprised I'm only now seeing it.
I never took to the found footage genre (I thought its poster-child The Blair Watch Project was just aight), I thought the zombie movies were being overdone, and torture films do nothing for me.
Slasher films, on the other hand, have the advantage of presenting the kind of situations that you are more likely to find yourself in (you're more likely to get stabbed than, say, locked in a gas chamber while tied to a chair and placed under a guillotine) and therefore the horror is more effective since you can see yourself as one of the screaming teens.
Scream has enough in-jokes to breath new life into the genre but not too much cynicism that you can't have fun. There are thrills from beginning to end, and it's truly funny at times.