Scream: 5 Horror Tropes It Subverted (& 5 It Adhered To) – Screen Rant

While Wes Craven's Scream is a meta satire of the slasher genre, it still follows horror rules, from final girl Sidney to masked killer Ghostface.

Director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson beautifully satirized the tropes of slashers with their meta 1996 classic Scream. Neve Campbell challenged the stereotypes of female characters in horror movies, while the movie itself revitalized the genre. As the story of a masked serial killer picking off high schoolers, Scream is a pretty standard slasher, but it also upends a lot of the usual clichs of those movies.

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Williamsons darkly comic script subverts plenty of familiar tropes in a self-aware critique of the genre, but also adheres to enough of them to deliver the goods for slasher fans.

In most horror movies, the characters have never seen a horror movie. The survivors of a zombie apocalypse dont know what zombies are, friends who stay at a cabin in the woods dont realize there are dozens of movies about that exact scenario taking a sinister turn, and the victims of a masked killer have never caught a slasher late one night on cable.

The most meta element of Scream is that its characters are actually familiar with the history of horror cinema. In the opening scene, the Ghostface killer establishes this right away by asking Drew Barrymore, Whats your favorite scary movie? Randy even gives his friends a crash course in how to survive a horror movie.

In a lot of horror films, audiences will find themselves imploring the characters on-screen to turn around because theres a monster right behind them and they have no idea.

While Randy is watching a slasher movie at a party, he cant believe that the unsuspecting victim on-screen doesnt realize theres a killer approaching behind them. Meanwhile, hes completely oblivious to the real-life killer approaching himfrom behind.

Almost every slasher movie has a final girl. Shes usually a studious virgin who doesnt like to party and, because she was well-behaved, the movie lets her survive the killers wrath. In Scream, Sidney does get good grades, doesnt go to many parties, and at the beginning of the movie, she is a virgin.

But by the end of the movie, shes not. She has sex with her boyfriend for the first time on-screen and, for perhaps the first time in the horror movie history, shes still smart enough to outwit the killer. And shes not the finalgirl, because four other characters survive.

In some slasher movies, the audience knows who the killer is from the beginning. Halloween begins from Michael Myers perspective. Other times, the killers identity is unknown and viewers arent sure which one of the characters is the killer until the end.

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In Scream, the audience is kept guessing about the identity of the killer until the shocking reveal that there are actually two of them: one who seemed like the obvious choice and one who was seemingly innocent.

Most slashers stick to one antagonist: Halloween has Michael Myers, A Nightmare on Elm Street has Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th has Jason Voorhees (in the sequels, anyway; in the first movie, its his mom), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has Leatherface, and Candyman has, well, Candyman.

Throughout the majority of Scream, fans are led to believe that theres only one Ghostface killer, but a final plot twist reveals that there are actually two Ghostface killers, giving each other an alibi.

In most slashers, the police prove to be useless in dealing with the killer, leaving the final girl with the unenviable task of bringing a sadistic serial killer to justice.

The cop character in Scream is Tatums brother, Dewey, a sheriffs deputy, and when he arrives on the scene, hes promptly stabbed in the back and put out of commission until the end of the movie.

One of the tropes that Scream specifically identifies, via horror buff Randy, is that sexually active characters die and only abstinent characters survive. However, Sidney has sex (with the killer, no less) and still survives.

The killer, on the other hand, does die at the end, so it technically adheres to this one, too, but the killer dying at the end is kind of a prerequisite unless sequels are in order, that is.

The villain of a slasher movie will often wear a mask that is specific to them and can therefore be used for brand recognition if it becomes a franchise. These include Jason Voorhees hockey mask, Michael Myers Shatner mask, and Leatherfaces extensive collection of masks.

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Since the Scream franchises Ghostface killer is just an identity adopted by various killers (including two different killers in the first movie alone), the mask is what ties them all together.

A lot of slashers will end with a final stinger, like A Nightmare on Elm Streets optimistic final scene revealing itself to be a dream or Jason Voorhees decomposing corpse jumping onto Alices boat at the end of Friday the 13th. This leaves the movie unnervingly open-ended, but more importantly, it opens the door for a sequel.

At the end of Scream, the killers are caught, Dewey makes it to an ambulance, Gale Weathers reports the events of the night, and no sequel seems to be in sight. Of course, there was a sequel, but it concerned a copycat killer.

Plenty of great horror movies end with a shocking plot twist: Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, Saw, The Wicker Man, The Descent, The Ring, The Mist, The Others, The Sixth Sense, Orphan the list goes on.

Scream adheres to this with a double whammy of twists: not only are there two killers, but one of them is Sidneys boyfriend!

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Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Spider-Man to Scorsese, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He's currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

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