My interpretation of Scream.

Due to large amounts of film being based on a certain genre, there are many types of clichés and conventions that apply to films of these genre (e.g. romance films often have slow running towards each other or kissing, action films tend to have get away vehicles conveniently appearing when necessary etc). Often Parodies of these films are made and make fun off these convention since they are commonly seen and everyone knows them (e.g. Austin power parodies spy films like 'James Bond', 'Galaxy Quest' and 'Space Balls' parody sci-fi films like 'Star wars' and 'Star Trek' etc). When it comes to horror films one of the most famous parodies is Wes Cravens 'Scream' in which a murder is going around killing people due to his knowledge horror films and how to get away with the murders. The film itself has many moments where it out-right take the piss out of many horror conventions but there are times when then films takes and more subtle approach and this is mainly towards horror theories rather than conventions but what exactly is 'Scream' mocking?
The first thing that is made aware in the being of the film is that 'Scream' is specifically mocking 'Slasher’ films' like 'Friday the 13th' and 'Halloween' in which the killer goes around killing people one by one rather than say a monster like the old 'Frankenstein' and 'Wolf man' films, or films that have a bigger emphasis or drama rather than horror like 'Psycho' or 'Carrie'. This is made aware in the opening scene where a girl gets a mysterious call from someone who is spying on her and eventually ends up killing her by stabbing her to death and then gutting her... nasty. The main parody point of the ‘
Slasher’ genre is when one of the characters in Scream highlight that there are specific rules to surviving a horror film like not saying 'I’ll be right back' or not having sex since these conventions appear in almost every ‘Slasher’ film and the audience knows exactly what ‘Scream’ is saying since every time one of the above rules is disobeyed in a horror film that character(s) dies shortly afterwards. This also happens during the film since whenever a character goes somewhere by themselves or has sex or even drinks a lot they die, which further emphasises the rules that 'Scream' mentions.