What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?

An Ode to Wes Craven

I had some friends over for a slumber party to celebrate my thirteenth birthday. We went to the video store the morning of the party (because this was back in the day when video stores were still a thing) to rent a stack of movies to watch that night, and I found myself wandering through the horror aisle again, as I had done since I was a small child scaring myself silly looking at the covers.

Classic.

It took me a few minutes to gather up my courage, but I grabbed the last VHS copy of Scream and brought it over to my mother, asking if we could rent it since it was my birthday. I must have asked to see this movie half a dozen times, and she had always said no, but it was my birthday, and this time, she said yes. Giddy with excitement, I took it up to the counter to check it out before she could change her mind.

Watching Scream became an Event that night. Only one girl at the party had already seen it, and for the rest of us, this was brand-new territory. I think there was that little thrill of anticipation all night, through the pizza and cake and the other movies. Finally, it was time for Scream, which we were sure would be the most terrifying movie we had seen in all our young lives. We turned off all the lights, settled into our sleeping bags, and hit play.

And for the next two hours, we were petrified.

Seeing Scream for the first time marked a turning point for me as a movie-lover. It wasn't the first scary movie I had ever seen - that honor belongs to The Gate, which up to that point had been the ONLY scary movie I'd watched - but this was the movie that gave me a taste of what great horror can do. Scream opened my eyes to an entire world of horror that I had never seen before. I had turned a corner. This was my gateway drug. I had developed a taste for that adrenaline rush, and now there was no going back.

Scream was revolutionary for me because not only was it a great scary movie - and that first time was genuinely terrifying - but it also made me realize how much fun watching horror movies could be. Instead of dreading the next scare, I was actually anticipating it; I couldn't wait for the next chance to scream, to jump, to laugh it off with my friends. A big reason for that is the film's self-awareness, the wink-and-a-nudge that accompanied the scares. A lot of that can be attributed to Kevin Williamson's awesome script, but it was Wes Craven's willingness to embrace that which really brought this film to life. Scream isn't just a scary movie, it's a commentary on scary movies, and the fact that it succeeds on both levels is what I love about it.

 

The other thing I remember most about watching Scream for the first time is how it scared me in a way that knocked me right out of my comfort zone. As I said, it wasn't the first scary movie I'd ever seen, and I'd read my fair share of scary stories growing up, but this felt different to me. It was scary in a way that felt real. The opening scene with Drew Barrymore is, to this day, one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever watched, because it took something that was supposed to be familiar and safe and turned it into something to dread. Up until that point - and I admit to being a somewhat sheltered child - home always represented safety. It was familiar, it was comfortable, and on some level I really did believe that if you were home nothing bad could happen. Scream completely shattered that for me. It took me years before I could stop watching that opening through my fingers.

  If that isn't one of the scariest lines you've ever heard, you're lying.

I think part of the reason I love scary movies so much now is that I'm trying to recapture that feeling from watching this the first time. The fear, and the anticipation (and enjoyment) of it. It's why I'm willing to wade through so much crap to try and find the good stuff (and any horror movie fan knows there's a lot of crap out there). I've never really experienced it again, and I don't think I ever will, but I've gotten close a couple of times, and I've discovered some damn good movies in the process.

So thank you, Wes Craven, for giving me that taste for fear that I've held onto ever since. And thank you for your contributions to the horror world, and the film world in general. And thank you for making my thirteenth birthday one of the best I ever had.

1939-2015