The seedling of the current movie landscape spawned their first roots in 1996’s Scream. Wes Craven’s masterpiece actively commented on the horror genre at the time, giving the moviegoing crowd their first dose of “meta” commentary. While other movie genres have captured some of that Scream magic (I’m looking at you, Deadpool), the 3 Scream sequels were more like squeaks, paling in comparison to the amazing original. With ten years past and some new blood taking over the series, 2022’s “requel” as the characters call it, comes the closest to the feelings Wes Craven’s film pulled off all those years ago.
Of course Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) show up here, but in 2022’s Scream requel, they are more side characters. The movie opens like the 1996 original [sorry, SPOILERs I guess for a 20 year old film], with a new Ghostface killer accosting Tara Carpenter (Jenny Ortega). After hearing about the attack on Tara, her sister Sam (Melissa Barrera) returns to Woodsboro to reconnect and help Tara. For Sam, that means hunting down this new copycat Ghostface before they strike again. Using the Stab movies in this universe, Sam deduces that the killer is probably one of Tara’s close friends (played by Dylan Minnette, Mason Gooding, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mikey Madison, and Sonia Ben Ammar).
The smartest move Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the new directors, make is to refocus the meta commentary. This Scream isn’t commenting as much on the state of the horror genre generically: it’s target this time in the concept of franchising. Smart choice for a couple reasons: 1 – the horror movie quality is at its greatest level since probably the 1970s, probably ever, and 2 – corporate franchising and fandom exploitation deserve to be taken down a few pegs. The 2022 Scream directors acknowledge this applies to their franchise too, openly using its own Scream legacy to frame the storytelling, even rejiggering the rules to focus solely on the rules inside a Stab/Scream movie. There’s lots of great barbs thrown at toxic fandom, the concept of “requels,” and franchise ownership that will land if you are someone who has watch a Star Wars, Marvel, or Conjuring movie, so, you know, all of the American population.
But if you’re going in cold to the Scream franchise (aka you just turned 18) and you want something resembling a scary movie, that’s where the comparisons between the 1996 original and 2022 reimagining start to diverge. The 2022 Scream isn’t nearly as great as the first movie was at scaring the bejesus out of you while also being really smart and kinda funny. If you’re new to Scream, you’ll probably be surprised at how much laughing you end up doing in a movie where there’s a whole lot of bloodshed and murder. This time around, audiences have had a chance to see everything, so completely upending horror’s status quo pretty much wasn’t an option, meaning the creatives leaned hard into turning this movie into a horror comedy. If you’re going into this Scream hoping to be scared a bunch, the movie will probably disappoint you on that front.
At least 2022’s Scream proved, like a great horror movie serial killer, that this franchise isn’t dead for good. Every few years, we can add a few new characters, kill a few old ones, and move forward while rolling our eyes at what is going on like the Scream movie characters do. I would like at some point to find a way to get Matt Lillard back in here y’all. Don’t forget, he’s incredible in the 1996 film.