Scream (2022) - Movie Review

Sep 25

What do you get when the brilliant writer of Ready or Not is given the task of giving a bloated, corpse of a franchise new life using a fantastic cast and large budget?

A reminder that Scream should have been a standalone feature.

Yeah, this movie blows.

Pardon my French—Let’s discuss.

The original Scream was a brilliant meta-take on the horror genre that launched the career of one of the best screenwriters of all time in Kevin Williamson and reinvigorated the career of cinema legend and all around great dude, Wes Craven. The film changed horror cinema, and overall thriller cinema forever. Not only did it have one of the best horror scripts of all time, it had a cast of up and coming stars that worked their asses off to create one of the most likable casts in slasher history.

In most horror movies, you hate the “heroes”. The vapid popular kids, the nerds, and the saintly virgin final girl are such lame stereotypes and lack any sense of reality. That’s why we all root for Jason and Freddy to finish them all off. Scream was the rare case of an entire cast being relatable. Even Billy and Stu, played by the equally underrated Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard are likable, and they’re the killers. When it’s revealed that they were the killers, the audience felt betrayed. I remember sitting in a theater with a group of people who gasped, not only because of the two killer reveal, but that it was two of the characters we’d come to love.

It was brilliant.

And then parts 2 through 4 happened with increasingly catastrophic diminishing returns with part 4 being one of the worst slasher films of all time.

I love Kirby as much as anyone else, but Jesus that script was trash. I watched the film as part of one of my movie night parties and I remember everyone yelling out who the killers were about twenty minutes into the film. It was so poorly written and directed, I hoped the series was just going to fade away.

Then my hopes were dashed with what, in the film they call a “Re-quel”.

Have you ever heard anyone use that term?

I review movies on a weekly basis and in all my research I’ve never seen this term, but in the movie they drop it in almost every scene. They try to build the killer’s rules based on this new type of film—riffing on the recent Halloween retcon sequels. The thing they forgot was that this film takes place in the same world as the other films—as opposed to Halloween where it only acknowledges the 1st film as being reality.

They missed the ability to wipe the other terrible films from the docket, because they wanted to set-up their killer’s motivation. However, the killer is upset about the Stab films, which are the in-universe adaptation of the Gale Weather’s books about the case in universe.

Here’s the issue—leaving the other films are having happened, ruins everything. It turns this movie into a farce. If Sidney Prescott had only survived Billy and Stu, and here anxiety was built around that one event—there would have been stakes.

However, this film lacks any stakes at all and seeks to upset the viewer.

The only people killed in this film are fan favorites.

Goddamnit Wes—I miss you bro.

The film makes you want to hate the killer or killers, but misses the boat on why the original film was able to create such memorable and hateable killers.

You need to love the characters first in order for them to be truly hatable.

You also need to have the mystique of hoping that your favorite character isn’t the killer. Unfortunately, this script is so ham handed and obvious that my viewing partner and I agreed on who the killers were at about the thirty minute mark and were 100% right. It’s disappointing.

What is sadder is that all of this being obvious is part of the joke.

Yeah, this film decides to become a comedy in the third act.

The first half of the film is actually enjoyable, but as soon as Sydney Prescott shows up, the movie starts swirling the toilet bowl. Sydney, the badass woman who was hunted by 8 different killers and killed 7 of them walks in the door and immediately starts spitting one-liners and pointing out the meta issues with the killers and then showing that she’s a cold blooded killer herself.

It’s beyond strange.

The third act literally feels like they looked at the script and said, “Shit, we forgot to mimic Williamson’s wit, jam in a bunch of snarky humor at the end.”

I can’t go any farther with my bitching until I sound the Alarm.

Ahem

***Spoiler Alert***Spoiler Alert***Spoiler Alert***Spoiler Alert***Spoiler Alert***Spoiler Alert***Spoiler Alert***

There’s a lot of rules in Scream.

Rule #1 - You don’t kill Dewey.

I mean, fuck this movie. I get that they really wanted you to have the killer. They desperately wanted to build up the anyone can die at any time feel of the original, but again—you do that with making you love the characters.

90% of these characters are garbage stereotypes that are more annoying than the cast of Friday the 13th, part 3. They are incredibly unlikable. The likable characters are Wes, Dewey, and our two leading ladies and two of those 4 die horribly.

I know people like Richie, but that’s just because it’s Jack Quaid typecast as the same character he plays in every movie.

Also, if you didn’t know Richie and Amber were the killers from the moment they meet in the hospital over Tara’s hospital bed, you’re blind or you weren’t paying attention. That scene so obviously shows that the two characters have a well developed chemistry as their dialogue is at Gilmore Girls pacing. It’s an embarrassment of a scene for any Mystery/Slasher writer.

Mario Bava is spinning in his grave.

This film lacked any true creativity and tries to substitute it by villanizing the fans of the genre. The two killers met on Reddit and decided they needed to go on a killing spree to reboot their favorite movie franchise. It’s a dumb motivation and doesn’t fit with the first 3 films common themes of revenge. It doesn’t help that the finale of the movie is nearly identical to the first. It even takes place on the same sets.

This film can be described in one word: Redundant.

Here are a couple of ways that I would have made the movie different that could have saved this train wreck.

#1 - Stu was behind everything.

What, you think Stu died at the end of the first film? In cannon, that was actually never confirmed. In fact, you rarely hear mention of Stu in any of the in universe press or reports on the original killings. He’s treated like a throwaway character, when in fact he was a main player. With the US justice system in shambles, even serial killers have been receiving parole early.

With that in mind, what if Stu orchestrated everything to take revenge on the person who stole his limelight—Billy Loomis. Billy not only betrayed him at the end of the first film, by stabbing him too deep and leaving him for dead, but he took all of the headlines. To the point that his release from prison went under the radar. When he finds out that Billy has an illegitimate daughter, he formulates a plan to seize the headlines for himself.

I was really hoping this was the direction they were going, as this would have fit perfectly into the film, but no…

#2 - Sidney is the killer.

Woah, Woah, Woah—here me out.

After 4 movies of having her life ruined and all of her friends killed, Sidney has the right to be a little unhinged. When she finds out from an anonymous tip that Billy Loomis had a daughter it sends her into a downward spiral. In Sidney’s mind, it’s only a matter of time until Billy’s daughter takes up the ghost face mantle with some of her friends. So, she decides to utilize the Ghostface identity to take out the kids before they can become killers themselves.

#3 - Sidney is the killer.

Wait, don’t click off — This isn’t a duplicate.

Keep the entire movie the exact same, except for the very end. After Sam brutally murders Richie and Sydney / Gale approach behind her. Their goal is to end the Stab franchise forever and to cover up the true motivations of the killers. There’s only one way to do that. Sydney and Gale kill the final witnesses—Sam and Tara. They frame the killings as a girl who went off her anti-psychotic medication and murdered her sister’s friends. In this version, there were no other survivors—meaning the twins are also dead. Gale and Sydney spin the story as not a ghost face copy cat, but just a disturbed girl who lost her mind.

Any of these could have redeemed some of the film, but in all honesty this is lazy movie. The script is a poor imitation of the original film and lacks any of the creativity of the second film.

I can’t recommend watching this movie, it’s just not very good. It’s style over substance, but the style feels more Wish.com than Couture.

If you feel the need to see it, it’s streaming exclusively on Paramount+

Zachary strupp https://www.filthyhorrors.com

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