29 Years Ago Today, Horror Cinema Changed Forever With This 10/10 Release (& It’s Getting A Sequel Soon)

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By the late 1980s and 1990s, the popular slasher film series were losing steam. The eighth Friday the 13th movie, Jason Takes Manhattan, made less money than any previous installment. Even after a four-year hiatus and a new approach, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday showed audiences had grown tired of the Friday the 13th story. Similarly, the fifth Halloween film in 1989 didn’t attract much attention, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, released six years later, fared no better.

I remember when Scream came out – it totally proved that people still loved slasher movies! It just needed to be something new, something with a bit more to it. And wow, did people show up to see it! Even almost 30 years later, Ghostface is right up there with the classic horror villains like Jason, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger – people still absolutely love him.

Why Is the Original Scream Such an Influential Masterpiece?

The original Scream remains the strongest film in the series, although Scream 2 perfectly captures the cool style of the late 1990s. Surprisingly, the film’s success wasn’t guaranteed. There was a lot of debate about getting an R rating, and its release so close to Christmas raised worries that audiences wanting holiday cheer wouldn’t be interested in a horror movie.

Some critics in 1996 surprisingly felt the movie relied too much on humor and not enough on building suspense. This is strange, because the film actually strikes a good balance between the two. Even if the opening scene with Drew Barrymore was the only suspenseful part, the movie would still be more suspenseful than many other horror films.

Ultimately, the movie’s success spoke for itself, becoming a huge hit largely due to positive reviews and people telling their friends. While horror films weren’t as popular as they are now, they typically earned most of their money in their opening weeks back in the 90s. However, Scream was different. It actually increased its audience each weekend – a 42.8% jump from the first to second weekend, and another 10.4% from the second to third. Remarkably, even its fourth and fifth weekends brought in more viewers than its opening weekend. People did see it during the pre-Christmas period, but far fewer went after the holidays.

Dimension Films was clearly happy with how they released the first Scream movie, because they released Scream 2 in December the following year, a couple of weeks before Christmas. Although Scream 2 opened with five times the audience of the original – which was expected, since the first film had built up excitement – it saw ticket sales decrease afterwards. However, it ultimately earned about the same amount of money as the first Scream, marking it as a success.

The original film’s popularity sparked a major franchise and inspired countless other horror movies that tried to capture its unique style. Films like Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, An American Werewolf in Paris, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty, Urban Legend, Phantoms, Disturbing Behavior, Bride of Chucky, Idle Hands, Final Destination, Ginger Snaps, Dracula 2000, and Valentine all borrowed elements from Craven’s classic in their trailers, posters, or overall feel. It’s likely that without the success of Scream, many, if not most, of these films would never have been made.

Meta horror – stories that are self-aware and comment on horror tropes – is still popular today, as we’ll see with the new Scream 7. However, no film has mastered this approach quite like the original Scream. Unlike other classic horror settings like Haddonfield (Halloween) or Camp Crystal Lake (Friday the 13th), Scream truly makes Woodsboro feel like a lived-in town with believable characters, making their deaths all the more shocking and upsetting.

Stream Scream on Paramount+.

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2025-12-20 22:43