Scream (1996) was Freddie, Jason, Norman Bates, and Sissy Spacek all rolled into two -- the two who took turns killing people. Sadomasochistic mutual knifings, human mutilation, and a constant threat of murder were some of the deeds in this movie. The writers prepared a dialogue which touched on blaming movies for murderous character and named several of the "famous" killer movies -- how right they were -- but of course the writers countered this idea by attempting to redirect the thinking of the viewer onto some other rationale.
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ADDENDUM:
For several days after completing this analysis I was bothered by a part of the movie that was indeed incorporated into the numeric analysis model, but discussed in text only superficially. I have hesitated to include this addendum only because doing so would represent extra work and would not change the CAP final score. But since the discussion of this particularly invasive part of the movie spoke only briefly of it, I decided to add this addendum because of the possible depth and scope of the impact on the observer.
The two murderers, Billy (Skeet Ulrich, the one who said "Movies don't make psychos; movies make psychos more creative" -- how wrong he was: how right he was!) and Stu (Matthew Lillard) were trying to cover up a planned wrongdoing by framing the intended victim, the father of Ulrich's girlfriend, Sidney (Neve Campbell). Ulrich and Lillard were going to do this by inflicting (hopefully) near-fatal knife injuries on themselves and by placing "evidence" in such a way as to point the blame at the father, who was to have been killed in "self defense" by the two near-dead-when-found murderers. While this would indeed be quite criminal to begin with, the producer was successful in making the actors portray the succession of horror in an exceptionally invasive manner.
In this part, Ulrich and Lillard were to stab each other with a hunting knife, repeatedly. And that they did -- over an extended period, the steel of the blade disappear into human flesh. At one point, Lillard was heard to say something like "That's enough -- please stop" while Ulrich was continuing to inflict further injury. Ulrich was very, very convincing that he was enjoying what he was doing with lust and hunger for more sadism. While the facial and body expressions of both Ulrich and Lillard were quite convincing, it was the quality of Lillard's voice that drove home the urgency and depth of despair and horror. His voice was begging for mercy in tone and inflection as well as in word, imparting to the compassionate observer a deep feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, and pain for the victim. I am "seasoned" in viewing this kind of imagery trash and I was very negatively moved by it -- one can only imagine what such acting was doing to the coping skills of observers who have little to no compassion, or to those already embittered by hatred and by disregard for human life -- could it, it Ulrich's words, make a psycho or could it make a psycho more creative?