Scream (1996)
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Part of the A Nightmare on Franklin Street 2026 series
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1h 51m / R / Horror, Slasher
Great ideas are only obvious in hindsight. Of course somebody should have made a movie like Scream, we all say, seated comfortably in 2026 when the whole idea of a horror movie that’s about horror movies has been played out, lampooned, revived and reburied over the past several decades. But think about the horror movie landscape pre-Scream: from the revival of the slasher movie in 1978 to 1996, probably thousands of teenagers pretended to be murdered on film. Not once did any of them wink to the audience or say “hey, this seems like a movie.” Are we expected to believe they lived in a universe without horror movies? Had Jason’s victims in Friday the 13th part VII never seen Halloween 4?
Scream’s premise is that they could have. And the fact that they could have, that horror movie victims might be familiar with horror movie tropes makes the movie itself scarier. It means no one is safe. Your knowledge won’t protect you. You don’t get to simply leave the fear behind in the cinema when you leave. And yes it had too many sequels, and we all went overboard with metafiction in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, but for at least a minute there, Scream was something that had never been done before.
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A Nightmare on Franklin Street series is presented by Bank of America. View the full series at https://tampatheatre.org/nightmare
**********************************************************
1h 51m / R / Horror, Slasher
Great ideas are only obvious in hindsight. Of course somebody should have made a movie like Scream, we all say, seated comfortably in 2026 when the whole idea of a horror movie that’s about horror movies has been played out, lampooned, revived and reburied over the past several decades. But think about the horror movie landscape pre-Scream: from the revival of the slasher movie in 1978 to 1996, probably thousands of teenagers pretended to be murdered on film. Not once did any of them wink to the audience or say “hey, this seems like a movie.” Are we expected to believe they lived in a universe without horror movies? Had Jason’s victims in Friday the 13th part VII never seen Halloween 4?
Scream’s premise is that they could have. And the fact that they could have, that horror movie victims might be familiar with horror movie tropes makes the movie itself scarier. It means no one is safe. Your knowledge won’t protect you. You don’t get to simply leave the fear behind in the cinema when you leave. And yes it had too many sequels, and we all went overboard with metafiction in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, but for at least a minute there, Scream was something that had never been done before.
**********************************************************
A Nightmare on Franklin Street series is presented by Bank of America. View the full series at https://tampatheatre.org/nightmare
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Tampa Theatre, 707 N Franklin St, Tampa, FL 33602-4400, United States
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