A year after the horrific murder of her mother in the town square, life is normal for Sidney Prescott. Sidney is surrounded by a group of friends who are supportive, as well as her adoring boyfriend Billy Loomis, in their small town of Woodsboro. Billy and Sidney had dated for two years before their relationship went from hot and heavy to “edited for television.”
The morning after a brief and PG-13 interaction with Billy, Sidney arrives at school to find that Casey Becker and her boyfriend Steve Orth were brutally killed after Casey received a creepy phone call in which she was asked if she likes scary movies and which is her favorite movie, following which she was chased and attacked by a figure in black and a ghost face mask. According to Tatum, Sidney’s best friend, Casey and Steve were not just killed “but slaughter movie killed, ripped open from end to end.”
Casey and Steve’s horrific murder shakes the town, but the most shaking part is that Sidney receives a call from the killer dubbed “Ghostface.” He details that he is watching her and if she hangs up the phone she will die just like how her mother did. After Billy appears in her window, moments after Ghostface leaves, he is arrested and accused of being the killer.
The plot thickens as the police struggle to find Sidney’s father who is away on business and Billy is held in the town jail. Sidney is plagued by press and phone calls from Ghostface, as well as continual reminders of the murder of her mother as the suspected murderer is facing punishment after Sidney testified against him. After the town initiates a curfew, Sidney’s friends decide to throw a party, and naturally, bloody chaos ensues.
While Sidney struggles to stay away from Ghostface and stay alive, almost every other character dies or almost dies, some even seeming to com back from the dead. Sidney fights until the very end when the murderers reveal their identities and explain their motive, quoting Anthony Perkins’s character from the classic horror film Psycho, “we all go a little mad sometimes.”
Scream was a new era radical slasher film, the horror genre was forever changed after this twisted game of revenge in which Sidney survives, inspiring three sequels. The semi comedic aspects of the movie lead to the trend of comedy horror movies, which cause audiences to shriek with laughter instead of fear. But ultimately, Scream is a series of plot twists based loosely on the rules of horror movies, which Sidney redefining the movie by saying “not in my movie” before shooting the main murderer, just before sunrise one year after the death of her mother.
