It’s officially the first day of Nerdoween!! It’s the best time of the year and as the leaves whip around our feet and the ghouls and ghosts come out to play, Netflix has blessed us with some very good news: the whole Scream franchise is streaming on the service… but only for six days!
Dimension Films, Lantern Entertainment
Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s iconic slasher satire reignited Hollywood’s passion for masked killers in 1996, when they set Ghostface on the unsuspecting high school kids in the fictional town of Woodsboro, California. The original smash hit stars Drew Barrymore, Skeet Ulrich, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, and Rose McGowan and dissects the slasher trend of the ’80s with whip-sharp humor and deep understanding of the genre. That latter part makes a lot of sense seeing as Craven was one of the minds behind the original spate of slasher movies with his iconic Nightmare on Elm Street series.
Williamson and Craven returned with Scream 2 which once again skewered the slasher trend and the rules of sequels. The meta-commentary of the first two films changed cinema forever introducing a cinema-academia sense of humor to horror and foreshadowing the so-called “elevated horror” trend with smart scares and high production values that belied the B-movie roots of slasher flicks. The third Scream film is a campy joy, with a bloated third entry plot that takes a lot from Craven’s magnificent A New Nightmare. Arguably the most meta of the original trilogy, Scream 3 centers on a third film being made about the killings that happened in the first film and shock horror… murders start occurring!
Dimension Films, Lantern Entertainment
Though the Scream 4 was—unjustifiably—widely disregarded on release, it is actually one of the best in the series. Featuring a killer cast, including the return of original cast members Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette, alongside newcomers Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin, Hayden Panettiere, Alison Brie, Adam Brody, and Rory Culkin, the film is a total joy for horror fans. Arguably ahead of its time, the opening plays like a mini-Black Mirror short—the film hit screens the summer before the Emmy Award-Winning show debuted—and plays throughout the film as a takedown on franchise culture, remakes, and the danger of celebrity worship. Basically it’s the perfect time to revisit the fourth and final entry and pay it the respect it deserves.
A lot can happen in a lifetime.
For the next six days, you can marathon all four Scream movies on NetflixUS — take a stab at it! pic.twitter.com/TvauIQ6oS1
— Netflix US (@netflix) October 1, 2019
Seeing as the first film came out 23 years ago, there’s a whole generation of horror fans who haven’t discovered the joys of Scream and this is the perfect time to rectify that. So whether you’re watching for the first time, just want to get your sexy Skeet Ulrich fill, or want to star October right, make sure that you find the time to binge-watch this iconic horror franchise whilst you still have the chance!