At no point does the audience ever see the attacker plunging the knife into the victims body - an action that would almost certainly be captured graphically in close up in a modern equivalent film. .
Scream illustrates exactly the relaxation of censorship in this regard. Within the opening sequence the audience have witnessed a shockingly realistic graphic image of a slashed corpse, and the film continues in the same vein. Scream relies heavily on its special effects and realistic nature of the violence, and this is evident by the frequency with which the characters are massacred. However, the question arises as to whether the film should include all these graphic scenes just because the censorship no longer restricts them from doing so. Scream has replaced a high proportion of the implied violence of Psycho with graphic violence. However, it could well be argued as to whether this makes Scream a more successful film or one more deserving of the genre. Much of the brilliance of Hitchcock's films lay in the way he built up tension and led the audience to a point that left them hanging, often supplying a much more powerful image in their own minds then could ever be captured on screen. Sometimes, what is not shown makes more of an impact. One viewer stated that: "Modern horror films tell us what we are supposed to fear, whereas films such as Psycho leave the images up to us Because as our mind tries to place a face on the fear, our mind incorporates our very fears into the image."" Yet the horror movie of the twenty first century has backed itself into a corner. The point has been reached where audiences are now expecting increasingly more shocking images every time a new movie is offered to them at the cinema. Film critic Dustin Putman theorised that: "All other horror movies prior to Psycho, are simply not scary in today's time because audiences have become more adept to handle violence.