Wes Craven, the creator of one of the most famous slasher franchises, makes a film that is a satire of the slasher genre.

That's actually pretty crazy. It would be kinda like the Russo Brothers turning around after Avengers: Endgame and making a parody of a Marvel movie. Of course, Craven's progression was obvious. He clearly fell out of love with the Nightmare on Elm Street movies at a certain point (even taking one last jab at them here - having Drew Barrymore's character say that "the first was okay but the rest sucked"), which led to his creation of New Nightmare. And this feels like the natural evolution.

Now Scream isn't always perfect. It certainly drags in the middle and I can see them going almost too self-aware in the third act in a way that could grate on the audience (plus on the more nit-picky side of things there is one example of terrible dubbing with Courtney Cox's character). But regardless of its flaws, the movie is a lot of fun. Its references and homages to previous horror classics (both direct and indirect, literally showing footage from Halloween and having a character's surname be Loomis in reference to both that film and Psycho) are endearing. And that first ten minutes or so, featuring the phone call between Drew Barrymore's character and the Ghost Face killer, are funny, tense, and legitimately shocking upon initial viewing. In fact, just talking about it makes me want to watch that scene again. And after I watch that... well... I may as well watch the rest of the movie too...