Gary Miceli

Scream (1996) centers on Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a high school student in California who becomes the target of a costumed serial killer named Ghostface on the anniversary of her mother’s murder. Directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson, the movie also stars Skeet Ulrich, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, and Drew Barrymore. The opening scene of the movie is widely considered one of the greatest and most horrifying openings in the history of the horror genre. It completely subverted expectations by brutally killing off Drew Barrymore, an actress the audience expects to be the star of the movie, within the first ten minutes. This shocking narrative subversion mirrors a technique previously executed by horror legend Alfred Hitchcock in his classic 1960 movie Psycho. Ultimately, Wes Craven manipulates the stereotypical slasher rules that we all know, making his own rules – all of which we see in the powerful mise-en-scène of the opening scene.

Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) answers the phone at the start of the film

In the first second of the movie, Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) answers the telephone. There is not a single minute spent walking around or establishing her character in any other way; Craven and Williamson immediately establish narrative momentum and deploy terror with absolute authority. The character is quite average in the way she dresses and presents herself. She resides in a middle-class home, has blonde hair, blue eyes, white clear skin, and wears an average wardrobe consisting of a bland, beige top and blue jeans. This choice of a bland, beige top and the interior of the house function to symbolize that everything in her world is completely ordinary.

Slasher movies traditionally target characters who do not play by the rules, punishing departures from traditional morality. However, the opening sequence of Scream explicitly subverts this trope by showing that Casey has done everything stereotypically right; she remains inside her home, maintains a normal domestic routine, and follows social rules. By brutally executing a character who plays by the rules, the movie establishes a terrifying reality for the audience: no one in this narrative universe is safe, regardless of whether they conform to traditional horror movie survival protocols. By drowning the character in an aesthetic of mundane comfort, Craven establishes a pristine suburban canvas. The phone almost acts as a piece of foreshadowing, because it is seemingly the only thing that is black in her house and the killer happens to dress in all black. This ordinary landscape makes the eventual visual intrusion of the killer a shocking violation. Ghostface’s pure black costume and stark white mask create a complete contrast to the soft colors of Casey Becker’s house. By operating as the exact opposite of the warm tones found within the home, this stark black and white figure visually represents a pure, invading darkness and evil that shatters the domestic illusion.

Casey Becker “drowning” in an “aesthetic of mundane comfort” – including popcorn

The phone Casey answers quickly shows us that a killer is on the other line, asking odd questions before she hangs up and walks away. When the phone rings again, the killer states he just wants to talk, prompting her to laugh it off and hang up. She then starts to make popcorn, which gives us a view of her house layout. The setting is average and mundane, reinforcing the impression that she is a very average high school student. When the phone rings yet again, Casey realizes this guy will not stop, so she begins talking to him. The back-and-forth dialogue between Casey and the killer, occurring before the four-minute mark, is beautiful. Ghostface prompts the shift in tone by stating, “You still haven’t told me your name,” to which Casey asks, “Why do you want to know my name?” (00:03:04-00:03:08). The killer’s terrifying reply, “Because I want to know who I’m looking at,” causes Casey to look around, frightened, as she responds, “…What did you say?” (00:03:09-00:03:17). The killer tries to cover his words by stating, “I said I want to know who I’m talking to,” but Casey recognizes the threat, replying, “That’s not what you said,” before the killer asks, “What do you think I said?” (00:03:18-00:03:26). In those few sentences, Casey shifts from being flirty to terrified as the killer clearly states that he is watching her.

Casey begins the scene very open in her positioning, very relaxed, but as the scene intensifies, she begins to shrink and cower, almost crouching over. This spatial invasion is heightened by the physical architecture of the setting. As legendary movie critic Roger Ebert noted in his review, Craven “is able to use the camera to make the physical layout of a house seem like a labyrinth” (Ebert). Because this transition happens so quickly, we continuously see that no time is wasted. A master of terror, Craven gets the scares out with absolute economy; they immediately establish what this movie will be about and what the tone will be.

Casey locks doors and windows as things intensify

Casey starts to lock the doors and hangs up the telephone. She looks outside quickly to see nothing, which establishes that this killer will be very stealthy. The killer calls back multiple times and gets hung up on, until he calls again, she snaps at him, and he violently responds, “No, you listen to me, you little bitch! You hang up on me again, I’ll gut you like a fish, understand?” (00:04:45-00:04:54). Casey realizes this is completely serious as the popcorn continues to pop on the stove, almost to the point of exploding. The popcorn on the stove serves as a direct symbol of a cozy, ordinary household and a safe, middle-class movie night. However, as the situation on the telephone intensifies, the popcorn gets completely out of control, directly mirroring the escalating danger of the scene. This aligns with screenwriter Kevin Williamson’s intentional design for the sequence, as he aimed to ensure that “the mundane becomes terrifying” by subverting safe domestic routines (Williamson). The preparation of the snack acts like a tense car ride; as the journey becomes more intense, the popcorn burns and the domestic safety of the house dissolves. The killer keeps calling and taunting Casey until there is a ring at the doorbell, but when Casey looks outside, the entryway appears entirely empty. When she doesn’t get a response at the door, she threatens to call the police, but before she can dial, another phone call comes in. At this point, she is hysterically crying and feels scared out of her mind. This reaction tells us that the character has never had anything remotely like this happen to her before, showing us that her life has been almost entirely sheltered from harm.

As the tension escalates, the popcorn burns

The killer lets her know that he heard exactly what she just said at the door, making her understand that he isn’t just taunting her from afar; he is positively there, somewhere where she cannot see him. She attempts to threaten him by mentioning her football player boyfriend who will come and fight him, only to discover that her boyfriend is right outside on the patio, duct taped to a chair and bleeding. None of Casey’s options seem feasible anymore: the police will never make it in time, her parents are not home, and she is completely trapped. This brutal progression shows us that the writer and director demonstrate uncompromising narrative horror, offering a masterclass in tension escalation. The killer then offers Casey a plan to play a movie trivia game: if she gets the questions right, her boyfriend lives. Unfortunately, she gets a trivia question wrong, and her boyfriend is killed. Now, she has absolutely no one left to help her.

The killer then asks, “What door am I at?” (00:09:12-00:09:14). Both Casey and the audience know that whatever answer she gives will be wrong. As the killer taunts her further, the house goes up in smoke as the popcorn starts to burn. The house transforms from a safe place to an intense trap, with her not knowing where the killer is; seemingly he can be anywhere, so the house is now a death trap. The device itself acts as an early visual extension of the killer, infiltrating her ordinary beige home long before he physically breaches the walls. Finally, the killer breaks into the home, reveals his stark black and white figure to kill her, and hangs her body from a tree. By manipulating these cinematic choices, Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson subvert audience expectation and systematically destabilize the usual language of the slasher genre.

Related: “The Posthuman Monster of Wes Craven’s Scream” (1996); “How Scream Takes a Stab at White Masculinity.”

Works Cited

Ebert, Roger. “Scream Movie Review & Film Summary (1996).” RogerEbert.com, 20 Dec. 1996.

Scream. Directed by Wes Craven, performances by Drew Barrymore and Neve Campbell, Dimension Films, 1996.

Williamson, Kevin. The Making of Scream. Behind the Scenes Featurette, Dimension Home Video, 1997.

Gary Miceli holds a BFA and a Master of Humanities (MH) in Film Studies and is an MA candidate in Screenwriting at Southern New Hampshire University. As a film historian, his research focuses on the visual architecture and mise-en-scène of high-concept genre cinema, historic blockbusters, and horror. His work decodes star iconography and world-building mechanics to celebrate and analyze the enduring legacy of classical Hollywood.