Most critics like Scream a great deal. The praise clusters on Kevin Williamson’s script and Wes Craven’s handling of it: the reviews describe a slasher that knows the rules of its genre, says so out loud, and still manages to frighten. The opening sequence comes up again and again as the film’s best stretch, and several reviews single out the young cast as stronger than the material required. Reviews written years after release are warmer than those from 1996, crediting the film with reviving a genre that had run out of ideas.
The reservations are about the balance. Two of the twelve, The New York Times and Variety, find the mix of parody and straight horror uneasy; the former sees a film that winks at the tropes while still trading on them, the latter thinks the joking slows the pace. Nobody dislikes it. The spread is narrow, and the doubts come from the earliest notices rather than the later ones.