In 1996, a wonderfully clever take on horror movies began with a dazzling sequence. A high school kid played by Drew Barrymore answers the phone in her empty house. A flirty caller asks her if she likes scary movies. As she wanders around, the call becomes ominous, then threatening, then terrifying. Thirteen minutes later, her boyfriend is dead on the porch outside, a masked man has entered the house, and Drew is killed by his knife.
In this one scene, working from a script by Kevin Williamson (no, not our Kevin Williamson), the director Wes Craven encapsulated 25 years of the micro-budget modern horror genre he had helped create with The Last House on the Left in 1972. Scream is violent and frightening, but it’s also extraordinarily witty—a quality one really doesn’t associate...