People always think prior eras blow chips when they get old enough, especially when it comes to things that were trying to be hip or "relevent" since that kind of material never ages well.
Right now we're getting to the point where the 1990s is viewed like the 1980s was a few years ago.
To be honest, movies that came out in the late 1990s, like "Sleepy Hollow" (1999 I believe) are some of my favorite films of all time.
*THAT* said, not every movie is for everyone. I get why Bob doesn't like Scream, and I can see why a lot of people right now who missed that (due to being too young to appreciate it) back when it was first coming out, can view it with a lot of scorn, because simply put nothing is more pathetic than aging hipster content for those who were never there.
I actually think Scream was pretty decent, but did wind up suffering from a horrible case of sequel-itis. I'll probably go see "4" before too long just for the nostolgia factor.
I'll be blunt in saying that I don't think every movie has to be "good" in any objective sense to actually be GOOD. This is especially true of horror movies. Yes, it borders on intellectual slumming, but I'm a huge fan of things like "A Nightmare On Elm Street", and various movies by John Carpenter (especially "Prince Of Darkness" oddly enough), I have and still occasionally watch Dario Argento's "Demons" and it's sequel "Demons 2" and that is about as low-brow as you can get on most objective levels. The third one which is actually "The Church" (not to be confused with the actually unrelated "Demons 3") tried to get a little bit smarter by playing with the formula a little I think, but it didn't quite work out.
At any rate, the point is that I put Scream in with a lot of those other movies. It's a decent horror flick to put in, put your brain in neutral, and enjoy a few halfway clever gags in an otherwise derivitive slasher movie.
I'll also say that I think part of the success of Scream all came down to the first kill with Drew Barrymore. Love it or hate it, I know some people who were really freaked out by that kill and how it ended, and to be honest I think that to some extent the rest of the series was trying to recapture the magic of that opening, and never quite got there, despite fans giving it plenty of chances.