Again in December 1996, an unassuming slasher film starring Drew Barrymore (and a bunch of different, much less well-known actors) launched in theaters. The film opens with Barrymore’s character Casey Becker dwelling alone. She will get an ominous telephone name from a man who claims to have known as the improper quantity by mistake, and it is downhill from there. It is a suspenseful and brutal sequence, made much more so by the truth that Casey was marketed as the principle character. It is her face on the poster, in any case; how may the film even proceed if she’s useless inside the first ten minutes?
Should you watch the film for the primary time years later, this meta context is probably going misplaced on you. Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox at the moment are huge stars in their very own proper, and their characters Sidney and Gale are so iconic that even non-fans are at the very least vaguely acquainted. A contemporary viewer watches the opening scene and instantly assumes Casey’s going to die. She’s the opening kill, in any case, a staple of the horror style. However in the event you’re totally anticipating a Barrymore-centric film, it is extra doubtless you will miss the indicators. As Barrymore defined in a 2020 Scorching Ones interview, that is precisely what she herself had in thoughts:
“Within the horror movie style, my greatest pet peeve was that I at all times knew the principle character was going to be slugging by way of on the finish however was going to creak by and make it. What I wished to do is to take that consolation zone away. So I requested if I may very well be Casey Becker so we’d set up this rule doesn’t apply on this movie.”