Seven at 30: How David Fincher brought horror back a year before Scream

Horror was at a low ebb for the first half of the 1990s. The slasher boom of the ‘80s had waned, and each new year of the ‘90s held ominous signs. 1991 saw the release of last-gasp-for-now sequels for Freddy Krueger and Chucky the killer doll. In 1992, horror maestro John Carpenter released a movie about the invisible man — starring a decidedly non-monstrous Chevy Chase. Looking at the 1993 box office charts, the closest thing to horror in the top 25 is The Nightmare Before Christmas. And in 1994, Sony’s unofficial revival of Universal monsters in a series of big-budget, star-driven productions for adults screeched to a halt when Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein flopped. The stage was set for Scream to revive slashers and horror in general in 1996.