It all begins with a telephone call. Following the horrific double homicide of two teens by a slasher wearing a Halloween costume based on Norwegian painter Edward Munch's "The Scream," police and pushy reporters surround the local high school. One girl, Sidney (Neve Campbell), seems more upset than her peers, most of whom are too jaded from watching an excess of slasher movies to be truly appalled. Sidney has good reason to be unnerved; the year before, her mother was raped and killed. Sidney thought the cops had caught and, with her help, convicted the murderer, but she could be wrong. That night, while she is home alone, the telephone rings . . . . Considered by many to be Wes Craven's finest work, Scream is a film that operates on different levels. Superficially, it's a tightly-woven, fast-moving horror thriller that, considering the genre, is relatively free of nauseatingly graphic gore. On another level, it's a not-so-sly parody sure to delight slasher movie aficionados with its in-jokes and references to other films, directors and stars. The main characters are horror-movie buffs who seem to have lost touch with their own reality. To them their lives are like slasher movies, and the horror around them will unfold in predictable ways; therefore they believe themselves in control of their situations. But of course, life is not a movie and Craven takes great pleasure in using the genre's cliches and turning them inside out. Finally, while it initially seems an indictment against these films and the effect they have on American youth, what Craven has really constructed is a chilling reply to his critics about the true nature of violence.