While the focus for slasher-horrors usually remains on gory murders and bloodbaths, what “Scream” did thirty years ago was exceptionally clever. It has all the formulaic elements of a slasher-horror: a killer in a mask, panicked high school students, and a foreboding sense of dread that chases everyone in the small town of Woodsboro, but at the same time, the film constantly satirises the genre, mocks its elements of horror, and creates a convincing series of tongue-in-cheek moments, confusing the viewers.
Scream’ never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously, which is precisely why it still feels relevant—less for its serial-killer novelty, and more for how sharply it captures adolescent minds shaped by pop culture and a wave of new-age influences.
Spoilers Ahead
Scream (1996) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Why were Casey and Steve Killed?
If you look closely, “Scream” derives its horror from enemies behind a screen. The film was released in 1996, when television, home videos, and cellular phones were integral elements to the everyday life of teens. Beyond parental supervision, the teens would reach out for the occasional wrong-dialed number and the forbidden realm of horror and gore behind the TV screen.
That’s exactly how “Scream” begins; The film starts with Casey, alone at home, casually picking up the phone and striking up a conversation with a stranger. The mysterious stranger asks her questions about herself, mildly flirts with her, until things take a sharper turn. In the middle of their conversation, Casey realises that the caller can actually see her when he describes her blonde hair.
We don’t see the caller around in the premises, but there is a spike in the atmosphere; it suddenly shifts from being a laid-back evening with a flirty phone call for Casey to being under constant surveillance. Funnily enough, the caller wants to play a game. While it sounds innocent at first, the caller demands that Casey answer questions about her favourite horror films since the two were discussing their favourite horrors.
Casey fails to answer the question about “Friday the 13th” (about Jason not being the killer, and in fact his mother, Ms. Vorhees, being the killer), and the killer draws his first blood. Casey’s boyfriend Steve had come to visit her, but we see Steve outside the door, tied to a chair with his mouth taped. When Casey gets the answer wrong, the killer butchers him to death.
The caller asks a final question to give Casey the illusion of choice in her survival, about whether he is at the patio door or the front door of the house. Casey panics and, with the phone in her hand, walks outside to the backyard. We also see Casey’s parents driving in by this time, but the killer gets to Casey and assaults her. What happens next is another horror of the celluloid.
Not only did a pop-culture quiz decide Casey and Steve’s fate, but when Casey’s parents come in and pick up the telephone to call the emergency, they can actually hear Casey being dragged through the ground with the receiver in her hand. While they can hear her, they cannot reach her. By the time they walk outside to investigate, Casey is murdered and hung from the tree with her “insides” out.
While the evil lurks so close around these teens in the small town, its disguise has an exceptional cover– it comes through screens, through horror references, and through the celluloid. It is quite exceptional to think of, since horrors and crimes of this kind would develop into an independent category of cyberspace horrors in the next few decades. Casey’s murder was only the beginning!
What Happened to Maureen Prescott?
What I just wrote about is only the introductory scene of “Scream”. As iconic as it is, the film just treats this as a premise-setting starting point since more scream-worthy murders are to follow. By this time, we have glimpsed the killer in a black robe and a Ghostface mask. The film then cuts to Sidney Prescott, another teen in Woodsboro, who is dealing with her fair share of trauma since her mother, Maureen Prescott, was raped and murdered a year ago.
As a result of this trauma, Sidney cannot be intimate with her boyfriend, Billy. Nonetheless, Billy visits Sidney, climbing up her window, trying to fool around. We also learn that Sidney’s father, Neil, is going to be out of town for a few days. It sets up the perfect premise for the next leg of murders that are gonna happen in the town, with the perfect person to frame.
Ghostface’s next victim is Sidney. While she waits for Tatum, her friend, to pick her up, she gets a call from Ghostface. Ghostface starts mocking Sidney about her mother’s death, and eventually breaks into the house to hunt Sidney down. Sidney is clever enough to evade his attacks, and she goes into her room to call 911 from the computer.
Thankfully, 911 comes just in time, but Billy comes even before that. Sidney is suspicious when she sees a cellular phone falling from Billy’s pocket, and thinks him to be the killer. The police, with Tatum’s brother Dewey as the deputy, arrest Billy, who basically claims that he is innocent.
However, this is when field investigator Gale Weathers arrives at the scene. It looks like Sidney is not fond of her at all. Gale is writing a book on Sidney’s mother, Maureen Prescott, and she believes that the killer who is in jail for her murder and rape is actually innocent. Gale claims that Cotton Weary had an affair with Maureen and did not kill her. Outside the police station, Gale brings this up to Sidney, who gets upset and angry and ends up punching Gale in the face.
How does Tatum die?
The town is understandably horrified by two teens dead, and one was attempted to be murdered. The local police are at the high school investigating the kids. Meanwhile, there are also a few suspects. The police could not trace the calls to Billy’s number, but they were traced back to Sidney’s father’s cellphone. However, Neil is unreachable all the while, which complicates things further. While things are still not rosy between Sidney and Billy, she has fewer reasons to suspect that Billy is Ghostface since she received a call from Ghostface at Tatum’s house when Billy was in custody. There is no way he could have made this call (or is there?)
Even with all this going on, the group of teenagers seems to be having quite a nice time. When classes are suspended, they all come in for a party at Stu’s house. It does seem like a honey-pot for Ghostface to strike again, so Dewey and Gale are also separately present, keeping an eye on things from a distance. Tatum and Sidney join the party, and Ghostface does not miss this opportunity.
As Tatum goes to fetch beers from the garage, Ghostface appears again and brutally kills Tatum, suspending her from the garage door in the middle of her attempts to escape. The party goes on without the kids realising what has happened, but elsewhere, another murder has taken place. It is Principal Himbry who gets killed in his office. As the kids leave together to witness his body hanging from a tree (very in track with how the film addresses the sensationalisation of it all), Randy, Stu, and Sidney stay back.
Meanwhile, Billy comes in to make things up with Sidney, and the two become intimate in Stu’s parents’ bedroom. Previously, at the party, Randy had mentioned the rules for surviving a horror film: not to drink or do drugs, not to have sex, and not to say that you will be right back. It looks like all participants of these activities will suffer a similar fate at Ghostface’s hand.
Scream (1996) Movie Ending Explained:
Who is Ghostface?
Well, the film had been dropping consistent hints about who Ghostface is. We all may have suspected Billy’s exceptional proximity to all murders, but the only thing that did not track was how he might have made the call, and then the fact that he was attacked by Ghostface in Stu’s parents’ room. Billy gets stabbed by Ghostface, and Sidney tries to make a run for her life and ends up in Gale’s van. Ghostface kills Kenny, Gale’s photographer, while Gale and Dewey venture out in the bushes and spot Sidney’s father’s car. Sidney goes back inside and is shocked to meet an unharmed Billy.
Things finally make sense when Stu and Billy come together, revealing that they are the ones playing Ghostface. Oh, did I mention that Sidney figured out that Billy used his one phone call from prison to call Sidney to make his alibi stand strong? While these two are dedicated to their shared role of being Ghostface, Billy also admits to killing Sidney’s mother, Maureen. He graphically describes her death and says that he did it because Sidney’s mother was having an affair with Billy’s father, which made Billy’s mother abandon him. Stu seems to be in it for the love of the game and is probably a sadist; well, both of them surely are.
Billy and Stu have also abducted Neil, Sidney’s father, and plan to frame him as the murderer. They had also cloned his phone previously. When all seems to be going quite dangerously for Sidney, it is Gale who saves the day. As Dewey and Gale return, the boys get distracted enough for Sidney to take Billy down. She then throws a television at Stu’s head, killing him. As Billy is about to get back on his feet to stab Sidney, Gale picks up the gun to shoot him. Sidney is saved, and she finally has closure as to what happened to her mother. The film ends with Gale reporting from the crime scene, probably she might just try her luck for that Pulitzer that she was after!
Scream (1996) Movie Themes Analysed:
Media, Masculinity, and its Monsters
For me, “Scream” screams of the earliest stages of manosphere content. The entire idea of the evolved manosphere now contains three things: delusional men, active internet propaganda, and acts of violence disguised as ideals. While the coinage is a product of the 2020s, there is an unmistakable presence of it in the film.
Both Billy and Stu are obsessed with horror film references, and they play around with them as if they cannot separate the celluloid from reality. They use phones to hide behind, creating a shield just as the red-pilled individuals benefit from internet anonymity. As I’d mentioned earlier in the article, this also feels like a zealous social commentary on the emergence of forms of media at the end of the millennium.
The film also features one serial killer villain, and in fact introduces two characters interchangeably, playing up the appearance of a formidable killer. What this tells us is that perhaps there is nothing psychologically unique about becoming a killer. Rather, it is the shared mania that drives both boys to commit the crimes that they did.
Coming to address it, Billy’s motive is surely driven by a very misogynistic reading of his father’s affair, where he holds Sidney’s mother solely responsible for it, and not his own father. He proceeds to slutshame her, and curiously also frames his desire to kill people as a reaction to his mother’s abandonment. It is a classic mockery of excusing problematic male behaviour to trauma induced by the mother, and hits quite the right chord with the feminist critique of Freud’s theory.
All said and done, in the end, it is Gale who saves the day. I see it as a win of two things. The first one is the win of the traditional, journalistic media over a stream of pop culture and new media that harms the mind, and of course, the second is more gender-driven: women standing up for women and uncovering the truth behind the violence.
It’s the thirtieth anniversary of “Scream”, and while the franchise has become a part of a certain kitsch, rewatching the film feels like an eye-opener. It is a self-aware warning of how the media can influence the young mind and create monsters who can commit the worst possible acts of violence, and justify them as idealistic, or sometimes, just mere play.
