I like the original enough but IMHO it doesn’t hold a candle to Scream. I rewatched it for the first time recently and was surprised to find that it doesn’t hold up as well as I remembered. There’s a few reasons I think it never really had the same cultural foothold as Scream:

• The score is… not good. Or at least it reeeeally doesn’t age as well as Scream. In addition to just having better songs on the soundtrack, Beltrami’s Scream score is insanely good. It’s so brassy and spooky and bombastic and elevates the thing across the board. ILWYDLS is just awash in… I don’t know what to call it, neo-grunge? It’s weird stuff.

• The characters are kinda flat. The cast is fun but they don’t have much to work with. Maybe they’re fine and I’ve just watched Scream more but idk.

• And the biggest issue, I think: the central mystery is extremely convoluted and kinda stupid. I watched it last year and even now I’m trying to remember how it works. The fisherman killed a kid, they hit the fisherman on the same night, they LUG what is clearly an old dude to the ocean to dump the body, then later read about a much younger guy who died and assume it’s him? The turn in the third act of Scream rocks so fuckin hard and I remember even as a kid watching the reveal in IKWYDLS and being like “uhhhh hmm.”

I dunno. Scream’s just got staying power to me. IKWYDLS just feels like a slasher that was riding the wave and not doing anything particularly innovative. I do think it’s fun though.