#18 & 19 Scream and Scream 2

Scream is probably the defining horror movie of my generation. As much as I love to talk about all the 80s horror flicks that molded my youth, they were all around a bit before my time. I mean, A Nightmare on Elm Street came out 2 years after I was born, for cryin' out loud.

But Scream hit theaters when I was a freshman in high school, and perfectly captured the angsty, self doubting, self aware attitude that was gaining so much ground at the time. Every now and then Hollywood lucks out and wins one. Kevin Williamson's screenplay started a bidding war and eventually attracted the biggest name in horror, Wes Craven.

The sharp, slick script and the fun young actors who deliver the dialogue are still fun to watch today. It's crazy to think that this was really the first self-referencial horror movie (sure, there might have been others, but history remembers only one). Bottom line, genre-redifining as it was, Scream is just a good horror movie in general. From the babes to the mystery to the tone and gore of it. Scream just got it done. And that opening scene is, just, moo(*kiss)wah! Perfection. It's still fun imagining going in to see a horror movie staring Drew Barrymore (she was in all the ads and on all the posters) and then... that.

Scream 2 is a sequel. It knows it is and it recaptures all the key elements of the first flick except for the surprise and newness of the whole affair. Annnnnd, whatareyougonnado? It's still a good time. There are more awesome folks added to the cast, including Buffy and Justified. And don't forget Roseanne's sister. Too bad that they had to kill off all of the really great parts of the first flick IN the first flick, leaving only Jaime Kennedy to carry on the fun of the first go-round. That, I guess, was the real magic of the first Scream that doesn't quite translate when the body count starts up again and new people start dying. The magic was that everyone was kind of having a good time in the first movie. Actors, killers, victims, lookers-on. Pretty much everybody but Party of Five. She was the only one who really cared that all kinds of people were getting hacked up. In this flick, it seems like everyone is a little more aware of that and aren't so quick to laugh it off, making this movie super 90s AND completely un90s. Weird.