The only thing diehard Scream fans may soon love as much as they love the franchise itself is entertainment journalist Ashley Cullins's debut, Your Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Films Rewrote the Rules of Horror, which recounts how the beloved series came to be. The introduction touches on how watching a scary movie in a cinema setting "is really about the moments after the scares. There's often a laugh, a shared feeling of catharsis, where we can wordlessly acknowledge that we survived intact, whether the characters on screen did or didn't." Cullins goes on to share scores of wide-ranging interviews and anecdotes from the film's production team and actors, including the making of the movie and the sense of belonging original director Wes Craven fostered on set. It's full of interesting tidbits, such as how Drew Barrymore thought playing the first character to die instead of serving as the lead would be "unforgettably jarring to audiences" in the first film and how Roger Jackson, the voice of Ghostface, never broke character or interacted with the rest of the cast on set.
Cullins has too much respect for the lasting impact of Scream to fall victim to the temptation to include juicy Hollywood gossip, and she writes with a shared understanding of how much joy a person can reap from Scream's trailblazing balance of humor and jump scares. Part oral history, part investigative reporting, Your Favorite Scary Movie is a fond, captivating look at how a self-aware collection of movies and the people behind them changed pop culture and the horror film genre forever. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer