For some reason, I had an inkling to rewatch this. I think it was because I was listening to Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and it reminded me I hadn’t seen this in a while. On this time around I noticed a lot of things I never really noticed before. First, I never found the opening scary. This was a lot of reasons, but most of all because I didn’t see it in 1996. I saw it after I had already seen SCARY MOVIE and because by the time I had seen it I had already seen horror films that took inspiration from SCREAM and pushed the envelope even more. The thing that makes the entire opening work so well is Drew Barrymore. This may be one of the best performances of her career and I actually think she should have gotten an Oscar nomination for the amount of work she does here to truly make it terrifying. I also noticed a lot of plot points and silly dumb choices the characters make throughout the film. It’s really the charm and tone of this film that helps you push past these blemishes on the film and just fall in love with how pure it is not only as a horror film but a horror film about people who like horror films.
