Scream
Ghostface's taunting phone calls — "What's your favorite scary movie?" — and a cast of teens who knew all the horror rules and died anyway. Wes Craven's self-aware slasher reinvented the genre for the Blockbuster generation.
Scream was directed by horror veteran Wes Craven from a screenplay by Kevin Williamson, and released in December 1996. Its opening — Drew Barrymore terrorized by a masked killer on the phone — became instantly iconic, and the film starred Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott alongside Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, and Matthew Lillard. The killer's voice on the phone was performed by Roger L. Jackson, who delivered the lines live on set so the actors could react.
The hook was self-awareness: the characters knew the clichés of slasher movies and openly discussed 'the rules' for surviving one, even as they were picked off. Made for around $15 million, it grossed roughly $173 million worldwide and single-handedly revived the slasher genre, which had gone stale by the mid-1990s.
A twist fans still cite: 'Ghostface' isn't one person but a costume, and the first film has two killers behind the mask. Scream spawned a long franchise of sequels and a TV series, and Roger L. Jackson has voiced Ghostface throughout — the sinister voice belonging to no single on-screen character.
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Neve Campbell
A classically trained dancer from Canada who became the scream queen of the '90s. Party of Five made her a household name; The Craft proved she could anchor a cult phenomenon. By Scream 3, Sidney Prescott was her definitive role—the rare horror heroine who could carry an entire franchise. In the 2000s, she stepped back to pursue her own creative vision.