originally posted on tumblr, Mar 14th 2026 

Movie-A-Day-Thon #19: Scream (1996)

Another day, another classic! Again my aversion to cashgrab sequel franchises haunt me, but in my defense by the time I was old enough to care enough about that stuff, shit like Scary Movie was on the TV far more than the actual source movies of the parodies, so meh.

A nice time capsule of a movie, not going to lie. Remember when people picked up calls from the land line and just. Indulged people? Remember when not ever call was a fucking scam?? We had it so good, holy shit. And what an intense intro!

It’s all very home invasion run-of-the-mill stuff, it was already going out of style by the time but it was a satire movie of it and other horror genres, so I can give it a pass.

Somehow the pristine lighting of the sets made it so clownish?? I don’t how to explain, it was all so neatly visible I felt like it was all shot under the lights of a hospital waiting room, kind of hard to be made scared of anything from that. I mostly just laughed. Also, people should kick killers in the balls more often again, whatever happened to that?

Some of the bullying feels so cartoonish now, but then I recall what it was like in my own childhood and… no, yeah, that’s pretty spot on, at the end of the day. And I imagine the 80s and 90s were even worse. Maybe wasn’t acted out as cheesily as Hollywood did, but yeah… Teenagers are fucking scary.

Quick thing!! The TV that falls on someone and kills them? Yeah way too downplayed. Cathode TVs, those big old blocky ones? They don’t just zap you a bunch, okay, those fuckers EXPLODE. No it wasn’t just for dramatics, they really did, it was MESSY.

Oh, Matthew Lilard. What would our current zeitgeist be without you? between Scream and Scooby Doo, who would keep us afloat? Who could have possibly been cast as William Afton, if not you? God I love how hammy his performance is, it’s peak class clown with a touch of repressed queer and I am so in love. I knew like three different kids just like that back in school, we really underestimate how common they were.

I also had NO IDEA this movie had Red Right Hand on the soundtrack, I feel lied to and deceived and mislead. Why did nobody tell me?!

Do yourself a favor, go re/watch this movie instead of the bullshit seventh one or the remake, ilu mwah <3