Ahhhhhh, these are our memories of the horror saga "Scream"

• The new - and fifth - movie

  Scream

  , directed by Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin hits theaters and Biggest Mystery on Wednesday

• The first

  Scream

  , released in the summer of 1997, revived a dying subgenre, the slasher, and spawned one of the most lucrative horror franchises.

• 20 Minutes

  Reporters 

   Share What Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven's Film Mean To Them At The Time

Summer 1997. Horrific cinema no longer invites itself at the box office, and the slasher has become a dying sub-genre, not to say almost unknown to the general public. It was then that

arrived

, born from the meeting of newcomer Kevin Williamson and

Wes Craven. A neo-slasher, meta and repository, which becomes an immediate critical and public success, and a cult film for an entire generation. Two sequels soon followed, then 10 years later a fourth film, the last of Wes Craven who died in 2015.

Almost 25 years later, a new 

 is released on Wednesday in theaters and in the greatest of mysteries, the opportunity for the journalists of 

 to tell how they discovered the first film and what it represented to them. at the time.

And like the opening with Drew Barrymore, it starts off strong.

- ATTENTION OLD SPOILERS - ATTENTION OLD SPOILERS -

"I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow" for Anne

I saw

the day it was released in France on July 16, 1997 at the 8pm session with friends from the film school where I was studying at the time. No way to miss the new Wes Craven, who has our deep respect thanks to

and

's Drew Barrymore

, who is also adored because Spielberg is the absolute master, is announced in the title role, her face big on the posters. We are also looking forward to discovering Courteney Cox at the cinema, which we have just discovered in a series we love,

.

In theaters, the shock. The character of Drew Barrymore is killed after twenty minutes in an anthology sequence. We cling to our seats. At the end of the session, we debrief: "Wes Craven is too smart, it's great, he kills his star like Hitchcock did with Janet Leigh in

", "I love how he masters all the codes of slasher while deflecting them, it's almost a horror movie satire! ".

I go home, alone, to my mom's big house, gone on vacation.

The phone (landline, I didn't have a cell phone yet) rings.

I pick up, I hear a breath, a sneer.

The merry-go-round starts again several times.

I call all my friends: "Well, that was funny, the good joke, but, stop, I'm starting to freak out".

Can you imagine that twenty-six years later, I still don't know who the little joker who got me was.

Because the night of July 16-17, 1997, I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow!

"In fact, horror films are scary" for Benjamin

Everyone was only talking about that.

You absolutely had to go see this film.

Other teens, cooler than me, had found it hilarious and glossed over the many references to horror films from the 1970s. Some even spoke of sexy actresses… In short, I went there too, so I could laughing and glossing over genre films and appealing to the girls in my class, maybe.

But I didn't laugh, I didn't get the references.

I just got scared.

But kind very scared.

Since then, my opinion of horror films has not changed: they are scary.

"For the love of" whodunit "and" teen "" for Vincent

It was during a scuba diving course in the South that I discovered 

at 16 in a small cinema in Cannes. So much for the totally free context, and yet precise enough to account for the importance of this discovery. And it was just as much the shock of the overture, the meta approach, the staging with a line (knife?) That marked me as much as the

 - literally "who did it". Who is under the mask of Ghostface? Who is the killer? In fact the killers! The film's tour de force is that, in its home stretch, there are no longer any possible suspects, only two remain. Yes: 1 + 1 = 2 killers. However, I did not think about it, I was too thoroughly, and keeps the memory of a real revelation, even of an explosion.

Scream is also inseparable for me, less of its director Wes Craven than of its screenwriter Kevin Williamson, who created the

a year later

.

and

, the two sides of the same coin and the same passion for adolescence (in series) and cinema (in genre).

"" Scream "fed my taste for genre cinema" for Fabien

I remember that one day in 1998, my older brother, eleven years my senior, came home with the K7 from Scream. I was 14 at the time and I was aware that the film, which I had heard a lot about - I believe in particular in the late

magazine which was a reference in terms of pop culture for teenagers at a time when modems Internet had not taken place in all homes - was forbidden to under 16 years.

The prospect of discovering

two years ahead of the supposedly authorized age then enveloped itself in a scent of subversion (yes, it didn't take much to make myself feel like a rebel). I'd had the opportunity to see some pretty impressive scenes

at a young age and imagined

would take it even further. In the end, I have few memories of this first viewing with my brother apart from the tension of the opening scene - I admit finding the rest of the film much less intense and thrilling.

I discovered

and

long after their release, on DVD.

And I paid a ticket to see 4 indoors.

With the prospect of the fifth episode, I remade these films over the Christmas holidays, three on the same day.

atmosphere

that is so close (whatever Generation Z may say) but seems so far away.

is one of those films that fueled my taste for genre cinema, quite simply.

"A concentrate of the 1990s" for Laure

In 1997, at the time of the French release of 

, I had already seen every 

saga 

,

, and so on. I'm 13 years old (normal) and as a huge fan of

Dawson 

,

and 

, I'm THE perfect target for this Wes Craven slasher. Recall that the film takes place in the peaceful and fictional town of Woodsboro where high school students are murdered one after the other by a psychopath disguised as a ghost. The assassin is also called Ghostface (ghost head), there is no coincidence.

If, today, the memories of the film have faded a little in my memory, it has left indelible traces in my mind as a young adult.

A terrifying mask with the false airs of  Edvard Munch's

 , the murderer's chilling breath through the telephone handset and especially Neve Campbell, who at the time played Julia Salinger from the cult series 

…

Scream

 was able to impose his style and start a trend with a whole generation of "horror teens" in the second half of the 1990s: 

(hey, hey, again Kevin Williamson) and the very hot 

.

The good-smelling 1990s Moby and 

 from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

"A road trip with Wes Craven" for Caroline

I remember a road trip with Wes Craven.

It was in Catalonia, on the occasion of the Sitges Festival.

He had just made

and seemed a bit bitter.

"I am confined to the horror genre, he confided to me and I would like to try to do something else.

He did so soon after for

Heart, with Meryl Streep.

Not really his most successful film.

He then signed to

.

For me, the saga remains associated with this anecdote and its creator so talented to scare, less to cry.

“Wazaaaaaa!

»For Clément

“Wazaaaaaa!

This is my most vivid memory of

.

Or maybe it's more of the opening scene of the first installment, when Carmen Electra is stabbed by the terrible killer, who ends up with her breast implant at the end of his blade.

Does it ring a bell ?

This is probably because this scenario is not that of

but of

.

When I am told about the horror saga of Wes Craven, it is obviously the Ghostface mask that I think of right away, but not the one that is stained with blood after the murder of Casey, rather the one that sticks its tongue out when he's talking to Shorty on the other end of the phone.

I imagine we have the credentials we deserve.

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