Scream stands alongside the viewer and lets them in on the jokes and conversation. [...] More than that, Scream expects the viewer to talk back.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 6, 2025

It's probably got more film jokes than the works of Joe Dante, John Landis, and Paul Bartel put together. I guess that's why I had fun watching it.

| Nov 19, 2024

Aside from the in-jokes, Craven ensures we scream alongside his characters at the indestructible killer in the Halloween who taunts down the phone.

| Nov 18, 2024

Scream trots out one suspicious and underdeveloped character after another to fake its ingenuity, and still comes up with a clunky climax, later than necessary.

| Original Score: C- | Oct 31, 2024

The result is a perversely entertaining experience for horror buffs that subjects you to a series of stylishly gruesome episodes preceded by deadpan comic references to popular fright flicks.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 17, 2024

Scream works as both a spoofy tribute to the genre and a genuine thriller, with an intense and dislocating finish.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2024

Scream is a howling great time.

| Oct 17, 2024

I found this a pretty nasty and depressing parade of gloating torture and bloody murder.

| Oct 16, 2024

The cast is enormous fun, playing it like Nightmare On Melrose Place.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 16, 2024

Scream succeeds through its ability to elicit both shrieks of horror and hilarity, as every bad horror movie moment becomes a target for ironic deconstruction and campy send-up.

| Oct 16, 2024

This is a movie that will delight young audiences who enjoy the peculiar combination of visceral fear and giggly pajama-party mockery that the form inspires.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 16, 2024

[Craven]'s not so much biting the hand that fed him as he's shaking it with a joy buzzer.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 15, 2024

An extraordinarily clever and self-conscious piece of work.

| Oct 15, 2024

Scream doesn't get too complicated, which is as much a weakness as a strength.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 15, 2024

What's terrific about the film is that it manages to parody the form and terrify the audience at the same time, introducing laughter and screaming simultaneously.

| Oct 15, 2024

Scream wants to be a satire and a thriller, but Craven doesn't go far enough in either direction to really pull it off.

| Oct 15, 2024

Though hardly recommended for the queasy, Scream is easily as smart as anything else passing for mainstream entertainment these days.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 15, 2024

Instead of striving to make things artificially funny, Craven concentrates on scaring you -- which he knows how to do.

| Oct 12, 2024

Here is a high concept horror movie for the 90s. It'll shock you and rock you.

| Oct 12, 2024

Scream is a meta-horror film that hilariously parodies the genre's clichés with smarts to spare.

| Oct 12, 2024