"Scream 5 2022" movie review

 Scream 5

Is it worth it?

It may sound exaggerated, but it's accurate to claim that there were horror films before Scream and after Scream. That's the original Scream, not SCREAM, which is capitalized and unmistakably not Scream 5 or even 5cream, but we'll get to that in a moment. Because without first considering the enormous change that Wes Craven's 1996 film SCREAM brought about to an entire industry, it's kind of hard to talk about SCREAM. Just over a decade after A Nightmare on Elm Street gave slashers a healthy dose of supernatural dream logic, Craven—working from a script by Kevin Williamson—changed the face of horror once more by dissecting his own cliches, removing the guts and gristle to uncover the beating heart of a genre. Scream explained the rules to audiences, demonstrated each trick in detail, and then threw them out the window (only to sneak around back, snag the rule book from the dirt, and whack the audience in the back of the head with it).

For better or worse, the following decades were filled with movies attempting to imitate the formula from Scream, despite the fact that the formula from Scream states that "following a formula gets you murdered to death with a sharp object," and all of a sudden, mainstream horror was like a snake cutting off its own tail with a kitchen knife. Even Craven's own sequels, some of which were commercial successes and some of which included Jay and Silent Bob, had to acknowledge the existence of Scream and the fact that Craven's defiance of the guidelines he helped establish had permanently altered how viewers experience horror. Every single aspect of Scream's ripple effect, both good and bad, and everything in between, is still permeating today's popular culture. You can see it in Netflix's Fear Street, a wonderful slasher love letter written in blood by the queer community who didn't have much of a seat at the table in 1996. You can also feel it in David Gordon Green's Halloween sequels, which are more interested in dissecting the idea of Halloween becoming a franchise than they are in telling

All of this is a combatively long-winded way of saying that SCREAM makes an interesting effort to fight with everything mentioned above at once. It's a movie that could only be produced by directors who were fashioned by the post-Scream culture, with storytelling instincts influenced not only by "the rules" but also by the meta-rules to break the rules. In this instance, the writers and directors are James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Guy Busick, with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett directing (Ready or Not). Together, they've created a Scream sequel that essentially explores the terror of creating a Scream sequel in 2022 without Wes Craven; it asks incessantly what the hell a Scream sequel should even resemble in 2022 without Wes Craven; that poses the question of whether the public would be interested in a Scream sequel in 2022 without Wes Craven, in a setting dominated by (sad face) "elevated horror." (SCREAM would pair well with The Matrix Resurrections, another legacy sequel that mockingly laments its own existence.) The fun of SCREAM is now literally its characters debate the rules of surviving a Scream movie thanks to the in-universe Stab franchise. In fact, a Scream legacy sequel is a relatively new sub-sub-genre with its own set of rules, which then overlap with a thousand different wants, needs, and expectations across a million different Reddit threads. When you peel back another layer, you find Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet struggling with these rules.

A Scream movie's real tightrope walk is whether it can ask these meta-questions and also just...operate as a fantastic murder mystery. I promise you that watching the filmmaker's existential crisis via slasher sequel play out is a blast. SCREAM's set-pieces are as fun as they are bloody, the kind of set-ups tailor-made for a packed theater, and they demonstrate that Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet's truly delightful 2019 boardgame bloodbath Ready or Not was no fluke. They also demonstrate that they have a keen understanding of why horror is such a close relative to comedy. The film's directors pay tribute where it's appropriate, but they don't strive to imitate Wes Craven's approach; SCREAM is a little more slick and bigger than its predecessors, notably in the way it frames Ghostface. The filmmaker, Brett Jutkiewicz, captures Ghostface in ways that feel particularly otherworldly, such as silhouetted in front of car headlights or up from the angle of a victim on their back. This film is very conscious of how Ghostface has come to be as much of an icon as a character. When the time comes, this new Ghostface is crashing around like a dang doofus and flipping over tables in ways that would make Stu Macher and his deranged scarecrow energy proud. But don't worry: SCREAM also understands the small things that make the character work.

Unfortunately, the part of the story that is supposed to be mysterious falls flat the most. The setup is well-known. A new masked assailant is on the run in Woodsboro, and their murderous rampage began with a little girl named Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), who was unlucky enough to answer a call from an unknown number while alone at home. Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), Tara's estranged sister, notices the terrible assault and returns to Woodsboro with her boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) and a ton of revealing family secrets that finally surface. But first, every member of Tara's circle of friends—Wes (Dylan Minette), Mindy (Jasmine Savoy Brown), Liv (Sonia Ben Ammar), Amber (Mikey Madison), and Chad—becomes a suspect list (Mason Gooding). This cast pulls off the task of portraying high school pals who organically, realistically seem like high school friends, which is trickier than it sounds. Not because SCREAM doesn't successfully herd its school of red herrings, but the film devalues them by going a little too far. Craven and Williamson don't receive enough credit for how neatly they maneuvered those parts around the film since the overall tone of the original Scream was so profoundly unsubtle. Despite the obvious enjoyment, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet frequently lack that deft touch. A few pointless visual Easter eggs, at least in my opinion, render the killer's identity all but obvious, deflating the impact of the crucial third-act revelation. In a sense, SCREAM destroys its surprise by becoming a touch too adorable.

But that's also the stumbling block that makes dissecting SCREAM's motivations so fascinating, as going a little too nice with your Easter Eggs isn't the most true, heartfelt homage to SCREAM of them all. Every time I thought SCREAM veered too far into overt territory—which, woo boy, it does—I would think back to the fact that Wes Craven actually makes an appearance in SCREAM dressed as Freddy Krueger and that Jamie Kennedy actually utters the words "look behind you, Jamie" as a killer approaches from behind him. The thing about SCREAM that most reminds me of Wes Craven is how it doesn't just call out a stereotype and move on. It employs tropes as a tool, as well as the audience's familiarity with them. Because, hey, it's in the heritage sequel rule book, the script pretty much confirms that legacy characters Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Reilly (David Arquette) are present. (Jurassic World and Halloween 2018 are both mentioned.) When they do appear, there is a cheap, sentimental warmth to the fact that they are there, that we recognize them, and that we can recall the four other movies they were in that we liked. The fact that Scream and SCREAM actually deliver that nostalgic high is the aspect of them that is most easily misunderstood. The knife is then turned, though.