Tear Jerker / Scream (1996)

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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• Casey Becker's death. She's so close to being saved, and then her parents close the door unwittingly. It is a distinctly poignant feeling to watch the determination of the human spirit as Casey struggles unarmed against her attacker. To make matters worse, her parents are frantically searching for her even as she's being stabbed and gutted. The music in the background (by Beltrami) is heart-breaking and desperate both at once, even more-so when she manages to see the face of her killer just before she dies.
  • Not to mention Steve, who is tied up and tortured right in front of Casey. Through the gag, you can hear him pleading for help when Casey has to turn the lights off at the killer's orders.
• Even worse, Casey's mother picks up the phone and hears her being stabbed to death. You can almost imagine her still being warm when they find her. In fact, her body is still warm, you can see steam rising from. . . parts. What is normally Fridge Horror in most teen slashers, the fact that all of the victims have parents and others who cared about them and will never see them alive again, is Ascended Fridge Horror here, as we get to see one of those reactions when Casey's mom finds her daughter's bloody corpse and simply crumbles.
• The mere fact that Billy, the well-meaning love interest, was a vicious killer all along. Once he reveals himself, he completely drops the nice guy act.
• Stu also has a Villainous Breakdown at the thought of his parents finding out what he did.
• And there's Neil Prescott, whose wife was murdered and her affair dragged out in public, then has to watch as his daughter gets targeted for the first, but not only, time a year later.
• The scene the day after Casey's murder where we see a shot of her empty seat in the classroom.
• The bathroom scene where Sidney has to overhear someone slut shame her mother, and suspect her of being the killer. Neve Campbell conveys so much pain just by looking in the mirror.
  • Sidney had also been in denial about her mother's promiscuity, convinced it was all made up by Gale. Tatum has to gently tell her there was talk about other men Maureen had affairs with. She's a seventeen-year-old girl having to come to terms with how her mother was not the person she thought she was. And she can't even hear her side of the story, because she's dead.
  • As it turns out, one of those men was Billy's father. When Billy reveals that to her, even though he's obviously the one in the wrong, Sidney briefly looks ashamed. Yet another Broken Pedestal in the neverending revelations about her mother's dirty laundry.
• Sidney finding Tatum.
  • Tatum's death. She gets caught in the cat flap in a garage door, and has her neck broken/skull crushed. Even the killer winces.
    • Even more so with the death is the final moment of Tatum's existence. Does she scream out of terror at the fact that she's about to die? No. She calls out for her mom just before she's crushed to death.
• While Sidney revealing that she's called the police is a triumphant moment due to it meaning that both Stu and Billy will face justice for their crimes, Stu blubbering that his parents will be so mad at him can be sobering, especially for viewers who agree that they would be more afraid of breaking their parents' hearts rather than society's judgement if they were caught doing something wrong.
• The Hope Spot where Sidney runs back to the house after Gale's van crashes and finds Dewey exiting the door. For a second, Sidney goes to him, only for Dewey to collapse with a knife in his back in front of her. While Dewey survives this injury, Sidney's face goes from relief to devastation within seconds.
• Just the fact that Sidney is forced into a situation where she cannot even trust her surviving friends after finding Tatum dead and Dewey wounded, pointing a gun at Randy and Stu, both of whom only hours earlier were close to her.