What did 1996 reviewers think of Scream's characters knowing they're in a slasher?

Research question: What did the earliest reviewers of Scream in 1996 say about its characters knowing they were in a horror movie, and did that change how audiences watched later slashers?

The records show that early 1996 coverage praised Scream's self-aware humor and its effectiveness as a slasher, though some reviewers found its meta approach overly irreverent ¹. A list-style document from 1996 says the film shook up the subgenre by making its leads people who had watched many slasher films ², and it describes the movie as a self-aware parody full of tongue-in-cheek references ⁴. The records show that later works were influenced by this approach: Scream is credited with revitalizing the slasher and popularizing a metatextual style that shaped many later works ³. One example is I Know What You Did Last Summer, which the document says was rushed out in 1997 to cash in on Scream's success ⁶. The facts do not describe how audiences actually watched later slashers, so that part of the question remains unanswered. The newest dated fact is from 1997, so these records are roughly 29 years old as of October 2026.

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