A new generation takes a stab at Scream in the first sequel without Wes Craven
Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette star alongside a young cast of hyper-articulate cannon fodder
Film Reviews Scream
Cell phones were supposed to kill off the slasher picture. For a genre built on isolation, miscommunication, and unheard cries for help, surely the ability to contact anyone, anywhere with the push of a button would be (pardon the pun) a death blow? And it might have been, if those masked killers—and the people who bring them to life—weren’t so darn resilient. Scream, the fifth film in the postmodern slasher series that confusingly shares a title with the first, engages with this conundrum throughout. In the 2022 Scream, smart home devices, location tracking apps, and phone cloning software are all tools in the Ghostface Killer’s murder kit.
But Ghostface has always been savvy. The killer(s) kind of have to be, given the hyper-articulate, horror-obsessed nature of their prey. And the Gen Zers in this installment are just as well-spoken as their ‘90s counterparts: In an opening riff on a classic sequence where Drew Barrymore is terrorized by phone in the 1996 original, snarky teenager Tara (Jenna Ortega) tells the modulated voice on the other end of her family’s land line that she’s into “elevated horror,” name dropping A24's greatest hits while condescendingly explaining that those films are more than cheap thrills. They’re metaphors.
The script, from veteran screenwriter James Vanderbilt and Castle Rock scribe Guy Busick, leans in to the franchise’s fidgety intelligence, swerving and ducking and winking at the camera like the “meta whodunit slasher” it proudly proclaims itself to be. In a signature Scream moment, at one point a character breathlessly monologues on the concept of the “requel,” a reboot-sequel that tries to take a franchise back to its roots through combining “legacy characters”—i.e. Sidney (Neve Campbell), Gale (Courteney Cox), and Dewey (David Arquette), all back for a fifth go-around—with new ones whose family trees contain the secret to the killer’s motive. The cherry on this blood-soaked sundae? The girl doing the monologuing is the niece of Randy Meeks, the original Scream “video store guy.”
With the snake busy eating its own tail in the dialogue, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett—last seen pouring buckets of blood on Samara Weaving in the eat-the-rich horror farce Ready Or Not—wisely opt for a flat, bright look that doesn’t distract too much from the script. (Heavy visual stylization on top of the rat-a-tat script would have rendered this film unwatchable.) The movie takes its time ramping up the gore. But as the action escalates, the corn syrup begins to flow more liberally, and the camera lingers a little longer on professionally rendered prosthetics of, say, a teen being stabbed through the neck. But the 2022 Scream—like the 1996 Scream—was made with an eye for cruel economy and merciless suspense, qualities that can make a scene bloodier in memory than it actually appears on screen.
The efficient direction leaves room for the audience to build affection for the characters—or, at least, be able to tell them all apart by the end of the movie. Among the film’s young ensemble cast, Mikey Madison (who viewers might recognize from her role as Manson acolyte “Sadie” in Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood) stands out as ranting paranoiac Amber, as does Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mindy Meeks-Martin, Randy’s aforementioned niece. Ortega and her onscreen sister, Sam (Melissa Barrera), make worthy additions to the horror-heroine canon as well. Ortega’s performance in particular shows incredible toughness and grit, as she runs, crawls, slips on her own blood, and generally fights like hell against Ghostface’s ongoing assault on her family.
Unlike another recent decade-late meta-sequel, The Matrix Resurrections, Scream seems overjoyed to be playing in an established IP sandbox. But the weight of legacy still holds the movie down. (It’s a heavy burden, too. The late Wes Craven, an undisputed horror icon, directed every Scream movie except for this one.) In its strained effort to combine established players with new ones, Scream’s structure nearly collapses on itself, building momentum and then squandering it for a visit with another old pal. This is most obvious with a pivot midway through the film that brings all of the many characters to the same familiar location. It’s a device that lands with a loud, clanging thud.
Essentially coaching from the sidelines, Campbell and Cox are game, if not fully convinced that they should be back in Woodsboro in the first place. (Campbell’s best moment comes early on, when she tells a concerned Arquette, “I’m Sidney fucking Prescott. Of course I have a gun.”) Arquette, meanwhile, treats the saga of Dwight “Dewey” Riley, now a washed-up drunk living in a trailer park, like Shakespearean tragedy. As the reluctant protector/sidekick of the film’s blithe high schoolers, Arquette brings an exhausted resignation to his do-gooder character that’s, if not quite poignant, certainly endearing. It’s an isolated moment of humanity in what’s otherwise a slick, self-satisfied giggle of a movie. But let’s be honest—an overly sentimental take on Scream 5 would have been unbearable.
93 Comments
Mikey Madison is great on Better Things, but I suppose a Tarantino film will always have a wider audience.
She’s also the one actress in the Better Things family who actually does have a stereotypically male first name, like her character. Sort of the reverse of the one member of ZZ Top without a beard being named “Beard”.
“What luck…!…”
Mikey Maddy better on Better Things, but I suppose a Tarantino film will always feet.
I don’t think she showed her feet in that film. Instead Margaret Qualley was the Manson girl who stuck hers in the camera lens.
nice
That and she was THE Sadie, from the memes.
I don’t remember such memes.
Scream 4 promised that Stab 5 would have time travel. Your review doesn’t mention time travel. Pass.
Ain’t no hot tub! Where the hot tub at?!
At least we have the Happy Death Day movies.
Ever seen “elevated horror,” . . . on WEEEEEED?!
You got most of your major food groups represented on the coffee table here…
Can’t wait to watch it!…at home. Since I’m definitely not doing theaters during this nightmare surge.
I am excited to see this one getting such good reviews. People hear “5th entry in a slasher franchise” and immediately roll their eyes. It’s cool that this one has seemed to break the mold a bit in that regard.
I think there’s really only been one dud in the series (Scream 3) so that would speak well for this one’s chances. My main concern was no Craven and Williamson only being a producer. So I’m glad to see positive reviews too.Also, a 5th entry did wonders for the Fast and the Furious!
Scream 3 was pretty meh, I agree. I loved the first two, and didn’t get very far into Scream 4 before losing interest. There was a great joke going around though that it should have been called “iScream” haha.
Sounds pretty great! At first I was a little thrown off by the darker tone in the trailer, but it should skewer modern horror which definitely is a little more self serious so it makes sense!And it is a hard legacy, not just for the fun storyline, but after watching the original Scream I don’t think I realized at the time how much it elevated the expectation of horror acting. Campbell especially gives such a natural performance. Although I think Emma Roberts went toe to toe performance wise with our OG killers, so I’m excited to meet these new characters, especially some queer ones!
“Arquette, meanwhile, treats the saga of Dwight “Dewey” Riley, now a washed-up drunk living in a trailer park, like Shakespearean tragedy.”My hot take is that the one good thing coming out of the fact that studios can’t leave their “IP” well enough alone is that it has destroyed the idea of the happy Hollywood ending.
RIGHT?!why is it that there are two modes when telling these stories: the villain was actually good and is fun to hang out with, the hero is actually always going to default back to being a loser.
But I actually think the latter trend is kind of good. Let’s have more heroes of our stories grow up to have their lives fall apart.
oh yeah i misread your point and realized after the fact that you were saying ‘this is a good thing’personally i don’t like it and think it’s become fairly cliche, but when it works it works.
Like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo?
Hell yeah. Give me sad, divorced junk trader Han Solo any day.
It’s definitely more realistic and reflective of our bleak present
Seriously? If I wanted a story about someone who has a brief flash of momentary success and happiness before falling into a life of miserable drudgery, loneliness and failure, then I’d write my own autobiography.Life’s miserable enough for most people, for Christ’s sake, at least let us have some escape from it.
As respectfully as I can say this, fuck that.
Taking a hero from a previous movie and making them a loser, a hermit, or some other kind of failure in a sequel is easy. Giving them some sort of larger growth or obstacle to overcome is really difficult. It’s why ESB is entirely beloved and TLJ is, at best, wildly divisive. And, speaking of SW sequels, this goes for double in films that are ostensibly supposed to be handing off the reins to a new set of characters. If you have to make the legacy characters look bad to make your new characters look good, you’re just not writing very good new characters.
It’s why ESB is entirely beloved and TLJ is, at best, wildly divisive.The correct answer for that is: time. ESB was not “entirely beloved” when it came out, and there were plenty of divisive things in it (Vader as Luke’s father, Leia going for Han rather than Luke). We just didn’t have the Internet and our current level of “culture as politics” discourse to magnify those divisions. Even so, the anger over the main character not getting the girl was loud enough that they made Luke and Leia siblings in RotJ, just to shut people up.Also, it’s worth considering that TLJ did give its main character larger growth, since that main character is Rey. One thing ESB didn’t do is give Obi Wan Kenobi a ton of growth, because he’s not the main character, and neither was Luke Skywalker in TLJ.
ESB was not “entirely beloved”Stop right there. There’s this narrative that’s started to spring up in order to defend the definitely divisive The Last Jedi by dragging down The Empire Strikes Back when at best there were a few fringe malcontents making a noise and I will not have it! There may have not been social media and the Internet back then but there were other ways of making significant discontent out – if it was there in the first place.
It’s not just a narrative that’s “sprung up,” though. Fans weren’t happy with ESB; it was divisive. For example:https://www.acriticalhit.com/fans-react-empire-strikes-back-1980/Or even a post from the official Star Wars site:https://www.starwars.com/news/critical-opinion-the-empire-strikes-back-original-reviewsHell, I don’t think talking about it is somehow “dragging” ESB, whether it’s in the context is TLJ or not. It’s entirely true to say that there were both fans and critics that panned ESB after enjoying the original movie. It’s not a false narrative or an insult to ESB; it’s just a fact of how at least some of the fan base responded.
Do you really think that TLJ is going to see the kind of re-evaluation that Empire saw? We’re already 5 years out from it, and I don’t see its rep going up at all— if anything, Rise of Skywalker has retroactively brought TLJ down simply by ignoring everything it possibly could from TLJ.
As for the Obi-Wan comparison, it’s not entirely fair. Obi-Wan had had about a half hour of screen time when they got to Empire, not three full movies almost entirely devoted to his character’s journey. TLJ takes that previous audience experience and throws it all off a cliff- literally. Blame that on the mystery box corner that Abrams painted Johnson into if you want, but it doesn’t make it any better of a choice.
There’s a lot of ways they could have used Luke as a supporting character to Rey that didn’t undermine everything that came before. The problem was that Johnson based the entire movie around the idea of subverting expectations and reevaluating the past… which is a dubious choice for a film which existed almost entirely due to nostalgia. I’ve always said that it was a ballsy move, but I don’t think that big swing connects.
Because Hollywood can’t risk trying a new arc with a “legacy” character. For reference, please see: bitter, old man Luke Skywalker. The backlash over not simply resetting his progress on the Hero’s Journey is what gave us Episode 9.
There are ever so many other examples, but this one is the most recent that pops to mind.
Especially involving characters who have been through this kind of trauma. Yes they might live, but no one walks away from these experiences well-adjusted.
Eh, I feel like a lot of these “surprise! their life is shitty now” retakes are just in service of resetting their arcs so we can walk the characters back to where they already were at the end of the first movie. The Matrix is the most glaring recent example, but they also kinda did it with Luke Skywalker (he learns to be a hero! Again!), and I bet Dewey gets some kind of redemption here as well, whether he dies or not. It’s more a testament to Hollywood’s inability to think of a second idea for any given character and an argument against sequels in general.
they also kinda did it with Luke Skywalker
They really did it with Han Solo.
I’m also not sure how new they are. I feel like depressing/resetting sequels have been around for an eternity.
That’s true, but I would disagree that it’s a good thing. The Rebel Alliance defeated the Empire once and for all to begin a new age of peace, just kidding, some other guys are evil now. We all learned the lesson of playing god and bringing back dinosaurs were a mistake, we’re lucky to have escaped with our lives, just kidding more dinosaurs.Also everything that happened in Star Trek: Picard.
Yea I agree with this. Returning the character or story back to where it started is just an example of lazy writing in most cases. Silicon Valley did it every season and it got so tiresome by the third and fourth time.Movies and shows that allow its characters to evolve, grow, and even be successful if warranted are better for it. Halt and Catch Fire is a great example of a show that constantly changed its status quo (if it even had one) around the circumstances of its characters.
The last Star Wars trilogy is a great example of the worst aspects of lazy writing–to a degree that it genuinely makes me angry to think about.
Yep. It annoyed me so much that the writers chose to make the story revolve around a small Resistance and a large First Order, buoyed by a Death Star like weapon, a Vader like leader, and a resurrected Emperor Palpatine. The Jedi are in hiding and non-existant again. They made the events of the original trilogy basically not matter at all.I saw a SW thread where a lot of people shit on the EU. But the EU got the overall shift in power balance right. It would have been much more interesting to see a fight between two near-equal powers than the same old underdog rebels vs the Empire again
Yeah, in retrospect Abrams needing to reset all the sequel trilogy’s needles back to the state of play in Star Wars was a fatal flaw.The EU has a lot of substandard material (a decent amount of good material, too, but enough quality control problems you’d understand why people would make fun of it), but almost all those stories share in common a desire to see what the next thing could be for the Star Wars universe. Even when people were indulging really bad ideas, they were usually trying to move things forward, not back to the old status quo. I really enjoyed The Force Awakens because Abrams, whose entire career is pretty much Draper’s Carousel pitch from Mad Men, really captured a lot of the emotional core of the original trilogy while also putting in some trenchant commentary about the prequels. I just wish he could’ve done that without slavishly copying Episode IV.
Abrams is the world’s most successful fan film director. He doesn’t actually know what to do to progress stories forward, he just wants to play in big sandboxes.
I’m thinking more along the lines of characters rather than rehashing old plot lines. I agree that trying to recast the Rebels and Empire in the sequel trilogy was a terrible misstep. Even the prequels had the good sense to expand the universe and do something different. But so long as we’re getting legacy sequels, I like the idea that we can explore aging, our different expectations at different times in our lives, and the idea of failure. Not all of these movies do it well, but I think the best directors take advantage of seeing what happens as the characters we know and love enter middle age and their twilight years.
I would be very, very surprised if there were more mainstream movies with downer endings now than there were before. It’s more that these legacy projects have a set of first-act cliches that undo the previous happy ending to reach a new happy ending.
Yeah, movies now don’t have downer endings, they have downer beginnings. But the real issue is that in a world where no popular IP is allowed to conclude or even to rest, the idea that any of the generally upbeat endings that individual episodes get is actually an ending, much less a happy ending, is risible. Out of all the films in the series, Scream 3 had a conclusion where Sydney finally gets a happy ending—she gets McDreamy and her (surviving) friends are around her and she’s finally not in fear for her life. But since then, she’s had two more Scream movies, and the only happy ending you’d believe in for her now is one where she’s six feet underground and finally out of the reach of random psychos in the final scene.Honestly, not even sure I’d buy that as a happy ending for her.
One future sequel (you know it’s coming), they really should have Neve Campbell cameo in one scene where she’s on the International Space Station so we definitely know there’s no way anyone’s getting to her in that film at least.
If there’s one actor that I believe can convincingly play a former goofball-turned tragically down on his luck but still somehow endearingly tough guy, it’s David Deathmatch Arquette.
Babylon 5’s century-spanning Season 4 finale may have been the one that did it first, and J. Michael Straczynski got quite publicly irritated at all the show’s fans acting like he was saying all the heroes’ struggles were meaningless just because they didn’t stop all war and suffering forever and ever.
Really Dewey IS a Shakespearian tragedy. All of the main cast is, condemned to constantly have psychos out to kill them. Once did enough damage to Laurie Strode. I both admired and was horribly sad that Star Wars allowed the OT heroes to NOT have a happy ending. Real life ensued in the fantasy galaxy.
Pretty stoked for this ngl, I’m in the minority who really enjoyed Scream 4 and I LOVED Ready or Not so I’m expecting good things even if the reviews I’ve read so far have been middling-to-decent. Usually I check out reviews to help me decide what I wanna spend my time watching or playing but this is one of the few franchises I’d be excited for even if it bombed with the critics lol
I appreciated the first one back in 1996 – it seemed clever, the opening sequence was solid, and it was a slasher movie with plenty of studio gloss, which alone made it unusual. I saw the second and third ones in the theater as well, and as a horror-loving guy, appreciated all the self-referential stuff. I think I eventually saw the fourth one, but don’t remember a thing about it.
But there’s something about these movies: they just don’t stick in the mind. The murder scenes are all pretty goreless as I recall (makeup effects artists are credited, but what did they do?), and pretty one-note so far as technique. And the back stories and motivations and everything all seemed like they’d been plucked whole from a soap opera, and were thus convoluted and impossible to remember.In sum: I’d have preferred a belated sequel to Deadly Friend.
“And the back stories and motivations and everything all seemed like they’d been plucked whole from a soap opera”bb I think you missed that it’s a slasher comedy. horrors are notorious for having really ridiculous back stories.
Yeah, but usually they’re fairly simple, even if they don’t make any sense.
The real classic slasher films are usually relatively simple (especially the first Halloween) but complex, soap opera like backstories strike me as a part of the later, lesser, 80s cycle of slasher films (please try to explain HappyBirthday to Me–a film I kinda love–to me)
Yes, I have a lot of affection for that one too, but it is awfully convoluted. Let’s see if I can explain it from memory (and spoilers follow of course):
Virginia’s mom was having an affair, and after a big argument with her dad, the mom takes young Virginia on a frantic car ride, where they get into a spectacular drawbridge accident. The mom is killed and Virginia requires experimental brain surgery.
Some time later, Virginia is attending a private school and her circle of friends, known as the Top Ten, start getting knocked off by, it turns out, her friend Ann, who was the daughter of the man with whom Virginia’s mom was having an affair, and whose aim is to frame Virginia for the murders.That’s remarkably close to Scream, actually (assuming I got it right), and, come to think of it, I remember that similarity being brought up at the time.
I did NOT remember half of those details (I mainly remembered that they were trying to imply that Virginia might be doing the murders in a fugue state or split personality or something) but reading your description has it (mostly) coming back to me, and you’re absolutely right.
And–I don’t think I did clue in before as to how much Scream borrowed from it. Though I shouldn’t be surprised–despite them watching Halloween in the first one, and name dropping Friday the 13th, Scream always has owed a lot more to the very early 80s “mystery” slashers like Happy Birthday to Me (the opening of Scream 2 in the movie theatre, of course, is a direct, err, “homage” to the opening of He Knows You’re Alone).
And the back stories and motivations and everything all seemed like they’d been plucked whole from a soap opera
They were written by the guy who created Dawson’s Creek. That kind of mid-90s WB drama atmosphere (cranked up to 11 and played for laughs) is what makes the series what it is, for better or worse.
part of why it works so well and has stood the test of time is that it’s ultimately a high school movie about getting laid, and how serial murder can both help and hinder that.
Also the fact that there are always two killers instead of one.
As slasher movies go, Scream is a separate beast. I find it incredibly misanthropic, in part because it acknowledges the reactionary sexism of its own premise, but mostly because it’s set in a world where no one is ever kind, ever. Everyone in the movie is always lying and/or being cruel and/or absorbing lies and cruelty. That isn’t a criticism, but I think it’s a difference between Scream and other slashers. Partly it comes from the level of polish – the bitterness is hidden by the dialog and the cast in a way that a low budget movie can’t manage. There isn’t as much memorable gore, but it’s kind of an intensely violent movie.
You haven’t seen a lot of 80s slasher films if you think Scream is an outlier among slasher films for being misanthropic (I’m talking about all the post Halloween movies like Happy Birthday to Me, He Knows Your Alone–which Scream 2 paid direct homage to–etc).
It’s a big genre, but I can’t think of another prominent example where the teenage characters are amused/delighted by the murders happening around them. That’s what makes the movie fun, but it also leaves the unmistakable sense that they have it coming.
I don’t remember anyone in Scream being delighted by the people they know getting murdered. Yeah the teens joke about what’s going on in the town, and don’t take it seriously, at the big party, but that also seems really common in slasher films (the post Halloween ones) which often had callous party scenes despite the teens knowing about murders. Am I forgetting something? (I own the Scream BluRay four movie box set but actually haven’t watched most of the movies in a very long time–)
That’s remarkably close to my take on Scream. If it were not for the “meta” element, they would be just another subpar slasher. It always upsets me a bit that New Nightmare does the “meta” thing, too, but it does it better, with real emotion weight and characters I actually care about, yet it was not the breakout success that Scream (and the rest of Kevin Williamson’s ouevre) became.
I like New Nightmare, but I think it might have just been a little too meta for the Freddy fans, who didn’t know what to make of the actors playing themselves, and too Freddy for the crowd who might have appreciated that kind of thing outside of a franchise horror picture.
I agree, and I also think it probably came out a year or two too soon–I’m not sure it would ever have been a big hit, but when it was released, NO ONE wanted an Elm Street film, no matter how good or different it was.
I agree about the Hollywood gloss providing an extra element of enjoyment. When the genre took off in the 1980’s, there were several glossy big-studio examples – “Terror Train” comes to mind, which really looks awesome as I recall.
Terror Train does indeed look awesome, being as it’s one of the few slasher movies shot by the cinematographer of Barry Lyndon.
I knew it had to be someone! I’m surprised I didn’t know that, I’m sure I would have looked up the cinematographer when I saw it, and I already loved Barry Lyndon. Thanks!
Yeah, though that only lasted a few years really–but Terror Train is a good example–they apparently spent a LOT on marketing alone (well, a lot for this genre) and the cinematographer was John Alcott who had done the previous four Kubrick films.
My fave crazy slasher, Happy Birthday to Me was directed by J Lee Thompson of Cape Fear fame (true, his career had been derailed by his alcoholism, but still that’s pretty impressive). He actually ended up living here on Vancouver Island (where he passed away) and came to talk to a class I was in in high school and actually was pretty generous with information when I mentioned the movie (I was worried it would be something he wouldn’t want mentioned).
WAZZUP!!!!!!!!!!!! Wait, wrong movie. Sorry.
Whatcha doin’?Just chillin’…killin’…..True…..true…
I’d like to see this. I just rewatched the other movies and it was a very bizarre set of feels: nostalgic thrills; meh-Timothy-Olyphant-was-so-hot; underwhelming but entertaining enough victory lap; and oh I’m old now but I still like these characters and haha Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell.Having said that, I am wary of going to the theater. So I guess I’ll either see a morning showing, which makes me sad, or just rent it at home later.
it’s almost impossible to read Katie’s movies reviews considering all the spoilers in them
So.. please spoiler this if so people, but I would really like to know if any of the original cast is the killer this time. Cuz if so I think I’d like to skip, and pretend this doesn’t exist; it would make the original movies a lot less fun to rewatch knowing that one of the sorta heroes ended up being a ghostface in the end.
It’s not a spoiler that David Arquette, Courtney Cox and Neve Campbell are all up front in the advertising.
She’s not asking if they’re in it. She’s asking if one (or more, it is Scream) turns out to be the killer. it would ruin her memory of the original film.
I’m going to see it, but man will I be disappointed if that’s the direction they go.
I can’t imagine any of the actors signing on to do a sequel in which their character is the killer.
It’s none of them.
What’s weird is that as the series goes on, I find it harder to buy “multiple serial killers with their own very specific motives keep adopting the Ghostface gimmick” than I do the premise of, say, “this deformed child who drowned grew up into an immortal superstrong monster who keeps coming back no matter how gruesomely he’s killed.”Like I think I buy a couple of copycats but by this point the psychopaths are just displaying a terrible lack of imagination.
It’s a hard sell, I agree. But I think they’ve done a good job of giving the killer motiviations that specifically require the Ghostface attire to work. Specially Scre4m and this one wouldn’t have worked narrativelly speaking without the costume
This just makes me sleepy.
It has the exact same fucking name as the first one? They couldn’t even bother to put a “The” in there like James Gunn? That is so stupid.
Scream The?
It is stupid, but it’s made fun of in the film and meant to be a commentary on franchises making this stupid decision. This is very much Scream 5, and I would hope the next one will be officially titled Scream 6.
Even as somebody who’s completely jazzed to sit through all the commentary tracks on that Friday The 13th box set (part 5 has 3!), I can’t for the life of me pick out what makes one Scream movie different from another, beyond the first one being pretty good.
2 takes place at a college and has commentary on sequels3 is in Hollywood and tries to do a trilogy thing with some early commentary on Harvey Weinstein, Jay & Silent Bob are also around4 is back in the original town and has a whole thing about horror remakes and is really fun and meta Hope this helps.
S0 the plot here is *not* a metaphor for trauma?
You know it fucking is
Nope.
Finally just watched this. Actually really enjoyed it. Jenna Ortega is fantastic I can’t wait to see her go as Wednesday Addams.