What's your favorite scary movie? The slasher genre has produced some of the most famous and easily recognizable films such as Psycho, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street. Each of these films can be credited for the slasher movies we have today and one that essentially saved the genre from dying out entirely. In 1996, horror movies had been butchered. No studio was willing to make them anymore, and if they did, they almost never did well. Even the most iconic slasher villains (Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger) were no longer bringing in the numbers because of sequel over-saturation. Then, you had the cheap rip-offs of these popular movies that worsened the oversaturated horror market. People just weren't scared of these movies anymore; they had become a cliché and, simply, a joke.

Then, Scream was released. Wes Craven, known for his work with Nightmare on Elm Street, directed the film that would change, and ultimately save, the slasher genre. A group of friends is terrorized by a masked slasher that kills them off one by one, and everyone is a suspect. It fit the stereotypical teen slasher movies, but did what no other horror movie was doing yet. Scream rejuvenated and resurrected the gutted slasher genre, but in order to know how, we first need to understand what Scream understood very well: Horror movies.

A Brief History of the Slasher Genre

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates Psycho
Paramount Pictures

It's hard to exactly pinpoint where the slasher genre started, but international films were already making something similar to the slasher genre with crime films in the early-20th Century. They usually followed a woman protagonist, a comic relief character, a cop, and a group of victims getting picked off by a masked killer, but they didn't really have a specific genre yet. In the U.S., horror was run by monsters to great success. Murder mysteries were probably closer to the modern slasher movie with jump scares and gruesome killers, but it wasn't until Alfred Hitchcock's famous film Psycho that we'd see the birth of the modern-day slasher movie. It was the first time that the villain wasn't a monster or a mysterious man the audience would never see; instead, it birthed the idea of having a memorable killer that audiences could easily identify. Once American audiences got a taste for blood, they wanted more, and during the 70s and 80s, we had something close to a horror renaissance.

The slasher genre began its reign of terror with popular slasher movies like Black Christmas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and When a Stranger Calls, but John Carpenter's Halloween (starring Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Psycho's shower girl, Janet Leigh) and Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street are the movies that we recognize best when talking about a horror movie renaissance. One of the reasons for those two particular horror movies to have the most success could be because of their iconic villains that have become beloved by horror fans for their appearance and depiction. Plus the fact that you could easily dress up as one of them for Halloween along with Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees and Child's Play's Chucky. From then on ,many other horror movies tried to recreate what those movies were doing, to a failure, and like any popular movie, they inevitably got sequels that do the same as the original with different characters and possibly a different location. In other words, every single slasher movie was the same.

"What's the point? They're all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act and who's running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It's insulting," - Scream's protagonist, Sydney Prescott

The Rules of Horror Movies

Scream
Miramax

How do you survive a slasher movie? Well, that all depends on how well you follow the rules of horror movies. The most commonly known horror movie rules, such abstaining from sex and never drinking or doing drugs, are tied to horror's connection to religion. The genre as we know it has always been religiously-centered, with crosses (or even upside-down crosses), demons, the antichrist, and the importance of remaining pure. Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees specifically targets teenagers having sex because of their irresponsible acts of immortality and Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween is always the final girl after never having sex on-screen, although Carpenter has explicitly stated everyone was projecting some messed up version of their own catholic guilt onto his movie's symbolism. Regardless, it became a heavily used trope in slasher films following Halloween.

So, what are the rules? If you have sex, you'll die. If you drink or do drugs, you'll die. Never say you'll be right back, because you won't. Also don't ask, "Who's there?" That's always one of the last things said before getting slashed. Don't go outside to investigate a noise. The final girl is the protagonist and usually the only survivor. Never assume the killer is dead; he'll likely come back for one last scare. Adults and cops are useless; it's always up to the final girl to stop the killer. Everyone is a suspect.

Related: 8 Best 'Final Girls' in Horror Movies, Ranked

The Resurrection of the Slasher Genre

Scream
Miramax

Struggling writer and avid horror fan Kevin Williamson got the idea to write Scream after watching a documentary about the Gainesville Ripper. What he created was a script that used horror movie logic as satire and contained characters that felt like realistic depictions of desensitized teenagers in the 90s who knew about horror movies. It was as if John Hughes had written a horror movie because the teenagers felt real and complex, and even the killer was humanized as it was the first time we'd see a masked killer get hurt, fall around, and make human mistakes. Not to mention it was the first time a slasher killer was given an iconic voice.

Scream didn't change the genre — not at all — in fact, The Blair Witch Project would come out soon after and truly reinvent the horror genre to bring us into the horror of found footage films. However, Scream took the tropes that had grown stale and repetitive and made them something fun to watch again. It was self-aware in its own flawed logic: like Sydney's quote about every girl in horror movies running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door, then minutes later, when she fails to get the front door unlocked, runs up the stairs. Or Randy shouting at the characters on the TV while watching Halloween cause the killer was behind them all while Ghostface is right behind him.

CaseyBecker
Miramax Films

The movie was self-aware enough to know everything you were thinking because it was written by a horror fan who consumed horror movies the same way its audience did. Drew Barrymore had originally been cast to play the "final girl" Sydney Prescott, but right before the shooting began, she stepped down from the role because she wanted to play the first victim in the beginning. The reason for this was that she knew people were expecting her to be the final girl because she was a big movie star. So, killing her in the first scene of the movie would immediately force people to let go of their expectations. So, instead, they cast a relatively unknown actress at the time, Neve Campbell, to play the lead role.

Scream refreshed the slasher genre by completely understanding it. It never once felt like it was making fun of the genre or being patronizing; it knew where it came from. Scream is a well-written and timeless movie that has amazingly complex characters and fantastic actors in the roles that would go on to inspire multiple sequels — with Scream 6 on the way — but what made it the hero of the slasher genre is the fact that it knew its predecessors and respected them and the formula of horror movies. It was a love letter to the genre and joined its horror idols as one of the greatest slasher movies in history.