“Scream” is an interesting movie as it manages to both celebrate and ridicule the slasher genre. It works as both as legitimate horror movie and a satire of one so it belongs in the same category as films such as “Starship Troopers” and “Kill Bill: Vol. 1”.

A small town finds itself terrorised by a mysterious killer in a mask. He likes to call his victims and quizzes them about horror films while threatening them. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell “Wild Things”) is still traumatised by the murder of her mother a year earlier and now finds herself a target of the killer.

There are some fairly big names in this movie such as Courteney Cox (“Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”), Drew Barrymore (“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”) and Henry Winkler (“The Waterboy”). Among the main cast, we have Neve Campbell, Matthew Lillard (“Wing Commander”) and Jamie Kennedy (“Romeo + Juliet”). Campbell, Lillard, Cox and Winkler are all entertaining. I didn’t really care for Kennedy or Barrymore. The ‘Ghostface’ killer is actually really good. It’s actually somewhat disturbing that the costume he has is such a generic one because it helps make you believe that the killer could really be anybody and also, other people may innocently be wearing the costume. It’s ironic that something chosen because it was so mundane has become iconic since this film’s release. Watch out for cameo appearance by Linda Blair (“The Exorcist”) and even this film’s director, Wes Craven (“A Nightmare On Elm Street”).

We get references to “Friday The 13th”, “Halloween”, “Hellraiser”, “Psycho”, “Silence of the Lambs” and countless other movies so fans of horror movies will love all that. Although the movie is a little bit too long, the dialog is often quite amusing and it works affectively as a real horror movie with some clever twists. For fans and non-fans of the slasher genre, “Scream” is worth a watch.