Kevin Williamson is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the greatest contributors to the horror genre (especially the teen horror subgenre) living today. While he broke onto the scene with the beloved teen drama series “Dawson’s Creek,” horror is where Williamson’s creativity soars the highest. Not only is he the screenwriter responsible for completely changing the slasher genre forever with “Scream,” “Scream 2,” and “Scream 4,” but he’s also the brilliant scribe behind “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” “Cursed,” and my personal favorite, “The Faculty.”
In the same way that every coming-of-age teen film has either been trying to replicate or subvert the style of John Hughes since the 1980s, every teen horror film has been either trying to capture the magic of Williamson’s work or do whatever they can to distance themselves from the obvious comparisons. How many times have we seen a movie advertised as “the best slasher since ‘Scream'”? Kevin Williamson’s run of horror films from the ’90s and ’00s was so strong, his influence can be marked as a “before” and “after” for the teen horror subgenre as a whole.
All of this is to emphasize that Peacock landing the new Kevin Williamson flick is the stuff dreams are made of, and it premiering on Friday the 13th only adds to the delight. Sure, I could binge-watch every Jason Voorhees film to honor the holiday … but I’ve already done that, so it’s thrilling to have a brand new slasher from the mind of the subgenre’s greatest living creatives to celebrate with instead.