Lionsgate

"Scream" isn't the only thrilling horror film around that has a meta-sensibility about scary cinema history. "The Cabin in the Woods," directed by Drew Goddard and released in 2012, also has fun with the hallmarks of frightening motion pictures. "The Cabin in the Woods," though, doesn't just have a Jamie Kennedy character who's watched too many horror movies. This title's meta-qualities manifest from depicting a secret organization that creates and unleashes horror movie scenarios to appease a toxic deity.

"The Cabin in the Woods" is seeped in rich horror cinema history, but its greatest pleasures are also ones that you don't need extensive genre movie knowledge to enjoy. Who can't cheer at unicorns stabbing people to death? Or the excellent bits of dark comic timing, as Joss Whedon's screenplay gradually collides a bunch of teens in a cabin with a larger terrifying conspiracy. "The Cabin in the Woods" and "Scream" are certainly parallel productions in many respects, but "The Cabin in the Woods" has more than enough of its own merits to ensure it's no rehash of Ghostface's inaugural slaying.

New Line Cinema

Before he directed "Scream," horror movie legend Wes Craven toyed around with his horror legacy with "Wes Craven's New Nightmare." This meta-take on the "Nightmare On Elm Street" franchise followed Heather Langenkamp playing a version of herself navigating the production of a new "Elm Street" movie. Much like the Hollywood horrors of "Scream 3," "New Nightmare" sees death descend on those making this film. Fictional horrors become all too real for Langenkamp and company as the actual Freddy Krueger begins picking off people, and very clever frights rooted in filmmaking mechanics gone wrong ensue.

"New Nightmare's" greatest scares come from blurring the lines between reality and fiction. This is a title where nothing is as it seems, viewers are never sure what's a harmless prop and what could become the object that pierced the heart of their favorite character. That rampant uncertainty informs a frightening feature loaded with sharp commentary on both "Elm Street's" legacy and horror as a genre. Plus, it's got a unique take on Krueger just from a design perspective alone. Even with this frightening villain's omnipresence in pop culture, the "New Nightmare" team makes Krueger feel fresh once more with his unique appearance. Anchoring everything is Langenkamp, who proves more than up to the task of headlining something with such a complicated tone. If "Scream" has you craving more self-reflexive Wes Craven movies, then "New Nightmare" is a must-watch.

Lionsgate

A critical component of "Scream's" success is how Final Girl Sydney Prescott isn't just a vaguely defined object meant to either scream endlessly or be ogled by male gazey camerawork. Instead, she's a figure audiences are supposed to profoundly invest in. There's extra dramatic tension whenever Ghostface tries to kill her compared to other slasher films that rely on only bloodshed. If "Scream" has you salivating for more slasher films involving extra jolts of entertainment from watching a Final Girl battle grisly intruders, check out Adam Wingard's 2013 feature "You're Next." This film begins with a classic home invasion involving folks in animal masks intruding on a wealthy family gathering and picking off the inhabitants one by one.

Turns out, though, that protagonist Erin (Sharni Vinson) is among those targeted by the attackers. Thanks to her growing up within a doomsday prepper household isolated from the world, Erin knows a thing or two about hand-to-hand combat. "You're Next" slyly begins as a bunch of helpless people getting brutalized and gradually transforms into a crowdpleaser chronicling Erin taking down these unsuspecting villains. Wingard executes this plot structure with many inventive kills while Vinson's compelling screen presence cements Erin as a transfixing protagonist. The way Erin's fractured relationship with her strained family plays into the blood-soaked proceedings is also fascinating. Like Sydney Prescott before her, "You're Next's" Erin is one of the most absorbing Final Girls in horror cinema history.

20th Century Studios

It's tough to balance out horror and comedy as deftly as "Scream" does. Still, there are plenty of other examples from filmmakers like Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, and Coralie Fargeat that prove yuks don't need to undermine the scares. Zach Cregger's 2022 directorial feature "Barbarian" is a great example. It revolves around a woman, Tessa (Georgina Campbell), staying in an AirBnB containing some brutal secrets underneath its floorboards, and it unspools in a playful fashion that already makes the bursts of humor more acceptable. This isn't a wacky movie, but it is one with darkly comedic sensibilities about how its characters keep discovering increasingly messed-up material in the endless tunnels beneath this AirBnB.  

Other moments of comedy, like AJ (Justin Long) encountering a torture chamber and immediately racing to try monetizing it online, wryly play on human nature rather than having characters crack tension-shattering, self-deprecating quips. "Barbarian" binds segments of levity with its most unnerving moments and particularly memorable examples of gross-out imagery by simply following the creative path of giving audiences a good time. Entertainment is always around no matter what tone it embraces. That's how you get "Barbarian's" skilled mixture of horror and comedy that would make "Scream" proud.

A24

Like "Scream" and so many other horror movies before it, "Pearl" is very much in tune with cinema's past. However, if you're looking for a horror-tinged movie that has noticeably different cinematic touchstones than "Scream's" creative influences, "Pearl" is nothing short of a must-watch. Director Ti West's journey into the backstory of "X's" villain leans heavily into visual influences rooted in old Technicolor musicals, Douglas Sirk features, "The Wizard of Oz," and other mid-20th-century cinematic offerings. A shockingly high level of entertainment mileage can be wrung out of taking the aesthetic of "All That Heaven Allows" and then juxtaposing a violently-inclined unhinged Mia Goth against it. 

Goth's "Pearl" performance is every bit as transfixing a horror movie turn as Matthew Lillard's work in "Scream." It's no wonder West just lets the camera roll on Goth's Pearl engaging in lengthy monologues, all captured in unblinking single-takes as she effortlessly reels you in and never lets you go. "Pearl's" brightly-colored production design is also a sumptuous treat, as well as its most delightfully maximalist moments like the now-iconic "but I'm a star" line delivery. Modern cinema can never be divorced from filmmaking past, as "Scream" so memorably reminded audiences. 2022's "Pearl" took that reality to excitingly fresh and unexpected places.

Magnet Releasing

Writer/director Eli Craig's "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil" is just as conscious of horror cinema tropes as any "Scream" character. Specifically, it's cognizant of the fact that countless classic horror movies have used redneck hillbilly archetypes as visual shorthand for "creepy" or "untrustworthy" characters. The titular leads of "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil," Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine), immediately subvert that trope by being backwoods Southerners in overalls who are just chill dudes. The villains of the piece, meanwhile, are standard attractive young people like jock Chad (Jesse Moss) who'd be the typical horror movie protagonist evading a slasher foe in any other movie. 

While Tucker and Dale nurse the wounded Allison (Katrina Bowden), Craig's script gets a lot of hysterical dark gags out of her "friends" trying to save her, only to end up perishing in grisly ways, like falling into a woodchipper. Contrasting those brutal demises with Tudyk and Labine's deeply lived-in and warm performances as Tucker and Dale makes for an incredibly entertaining experience. Plus, as "Scream" showed by tweaking slasher movie conventions, there's something innately fun about "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" slyly upending the standard class politics and hero/villain archetypes of standard horror movies. If you can handle some extremely gruesome deaths (realized through top-notch practical effects work), "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" could make for a perfect double feature with "Scream."

A24

Just as the bodies kept piling up in "Scream," the aptly-titled "Bodies Bodies Bodies" has plenty of corpses to spare in its saga of a bunch of spoiled Gen-Z twenty-somethings trapped in a mansion during a hurricane. Inevitably, these characters who don't trust each other under the best of circumstances absolutely fall apart as the rain outside gets more intense and people start turning up dead. If "Scream's" brand of mid-90s dark levity was your bag, check out the TikTok era of grim humor permeating "Bodies Bodies Bodies." This is a feature full of delightfully selfish people played with unabashed wickedness by a murderer's row of talented actors. It's not as weighty as "Scream," but like that Wes Craven film, it knows how to make you gasp and squeal at just the right moments with its bloodier impulses.

Just as "Scream" decades ago demonstrated the talents of folks like Neve Campbell and Matthew Lillard in the nascent days of their respective careers, "Bodies Bodies Bodies" also lets a bevy of young performers leave their mark in suspenseful, blood-soaked ways. The best of these cast members is, without question, Rachel Sennott as the flaky Alice, a motormouthed woman constantly flip-flopping her allegiances to suit her needs. Sennott's physical acting and masterfully hysterical line deliveries are a gift while Alice being such a radically different creation from Sennott's star-making turn in "Shiva Baby" encapsulates her impressive range. Her performance alone makes "Bodies Bodies Bodies" priority viewing for "Scream" fans.

Cannon Releasing

The original 1974 "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is a necessity for any film fan, horror-oriented or otherwise. It's a masterpiece of tense and gripping filmmaking, but its 1986 sequel, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" (while inevitably not up to par with its predecessor) shouldn't be discounted either. For "Scream" aficionados, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is another bleakly funny horror movie packed with social commentary and meta-ruminations on horror cinema. In many ways, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is the next level of unhinged self-reflexive horror cinema for "Scream" fans. Once you've watched Ghostface, it's time to explore something even more cuckoo and off-the-wall.

That uniquely absurd aesthetic peppered with bursts of pitch-black humor, gives "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" an excitingly distinctive personality compared to the original "Texas Chain Saw Massacre." It's also loaded with captivatingly oversized creations, like the malicious Chop Top and Dennis Hooper's ceaselessly vengeful Lt. Boude "Lefty" Enright. Richly detailed production design and memorably bizarre pieces of dialogue (many of them belonging to scene-stealer Chop Top) further accentuate this project's must-see nature. Subtlety isn't one of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2's" strengths, but that's precisely why it's such a riot to experience.

Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment

"Scream" entered an American horror movie landscape that was, to be gentle, fraught with problems. Long-running slasher franchises had grown stale, with audiences growing wise to tropes like the things that happened in every "Friday the 13th" movie. Predictability had replaced chilling scares, and it was clear the genre needed a drastic shake-up. Still, that doesn't mean "Scream" in 1996 entered into a totally desolate cinematic wasteland for horror: There were underrated '90s horror movies you may have forgotten existed keeping the creative flames of the genre alive. The entire decade kicked off with a wry horror comedy filled with the kind of satirical laughs and gruesome imagery that would make "Scream" a classic six years later. "Frankenhooker" imagined what would happen if Mary Shelley's classic tale of re-animating corpses, "super-crack," and sex workers all collided into one freaky movie.

While more humorous than chilling (a reversal of "Scream" being scary, first and foremost), "Frankenhooker" is a worthy precursor to "Scream" in how it skewers the real world while making your stomach churn. Vengeful anthropomorphized organs and body parts co-exist in "Frankenhooker" with commentary on '80s anti-drug rhetoric and the possessive attitude men have toward women. Plus, just as memorable as Ghostface's mask is Patty Mullen's go-for-broke performance as the film's reanimated title character. Her facial expressions are a riot, as well as how nonchalantly she dishes out sex-oriented gruesome deaths.

Warner Bros.

Much like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2," "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" is another sequel functioning as the next level of self-referential horror comedy cinema for "Scream" fans. If you thought that Wes Craven's directorial effort's awareness of classic slasher movie hallmarks was humorous, get ready for the hysterical sight of the titular critters of "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" literally stopping the movie's runtime with projection booth shenanigans. Director Joe Dante goes full jokester with "The New Batch," eschewing traditional expectations for a commercial sequel in favor of endless meta-gags and parodies of franchise tropes. All of that is combined with wonderful practical effects to realize the various Gremlins running amuck in New York City, including Brain Gremlin and Spider Gremlin.

"Gremlins 2: The New Batch" is a mish-mash of chaos and winking jokes that should get old after a while. Much like "Scream's" seemingly impossible fusion of genuinely unnerving slasher movie thrills and self-referential dialogue about that same genre, though, "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" proves adept at both self-mocking silliness and creative crowdpleaser moments, like Gizmo going full Rambo on the wicked Gremlins. Plus, Dante's commitment to wackiness subverting audience expectations (immediately established with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny taking over the opening Warner Bros. logo) is just endlessly entertaining.

TriStar Films

Much like "Frankenhooker,' "Candyman" indicated the promise of '90s horror before "Scream" revived the genre once and for all with its unique take on the slasher movie. For its part, "Candyman," like "Scream," was also profoundly in touch with reality and pre-existing scary stories, though not necessarily in the same fashion as "Scream" and its adherence to classic horror cinema. Instead, "Candyman" was all about the power of stories we tell and how they can keep the deceased alive long after they're gone. It delivered some truly intense thrills and chills focused on protagonist Helen Lyle's (Virginia Madsen) loosening grip on reality as the titular entity becomes more and more inescapable in her life.

While the original cast of "Candyman" is generally top-notch, the stand out is Tony Todd as the Candyman himself. A formidable and iconic figure in cinema history, Todd lends Candyman an immediately transfixing presence, not to mention oodles of gravitas that ensure this bee-covered entity is no joke to the viewer. Todd deftly makes this supernatural force instantly intimidating, but also rife with humanity. It's a towering, multi-layered turn that, just on its own merits, cements "Candyman" right alongside "Scream" as one of the standout horror movies of the '90s.

New Line Cinema

Over a decade before "Scream," filmmaker Wes Craven already cemented his status as a horror movie legend by helming 1984's "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Horror fans are still fervently rewatching "A Nightmare on Elm Street," as its scares and sublime filmmaking really hold up to endless revisits. While the early and mid '80s were a time of cash-grab slasher movies with uninspired premises, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" stood apart. This Craven film made Freddy Krueger an unforgettable legend by leaning into all the unhinged and terrifying possibilities of being stalked inside your dreams. In this realm, anything can happen, which explains why even one's cozy bed can become a domain for grisly demise in Craven's sick imagination.

A unique premise and striking visuals (right down to the precise look of Krueger himself) make "A Nightmare on Elm Street" a masterpiece none of its endless sequels could come close to in overall quality. In the context of Craven's career, it's also fascinating to revisit this feature next to "Scream" and witness how Craven was able to make two slasher films so distinctly different from one another. In a strain of horror filmmaking often weighed down by repetition, "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" both showed Craven injecting real creativity into two unforgettable takes on the slasher movie.