Scream

The quiet town of Woodsboro wakes up screaming: a killer is on the loose—someone who’s seen a few too many horror movies and is taking down victims in increasingly bizarre ways. A major hit of modern horror, Scream features a star-studded cast including Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and Drew Barrymore. Boldly and sardonically self-referential, the film pays homage to—and reinvents—classic genre tropes, within which the telephone play a central role as both a tool of terror and a potential lifeline. Its now-iconic tagline offers a chilling warning to all characters in phone-fueled horror: “Don’t answer the phone.”