The work I put into watching the previous four films of this franchise has now come to fruition as I sit down to talk about Scream (2022). And before we start the review in earnest, I want to say that this film will now always live in my memory as it was the first time in the near twenty-six years of my time on this earth that I had a whole screen to myself. This isn’t a great sign for the success of the film at the box office, but it was a great personal moment. It’s the little things. Anyway, enough of that and let's actually talk about this film. Ten years after the last Ghostface murders in Woodsboro, another set of attacks start up again, targeting a new group of teens as well as dragging some familiar faces back into a nightmare they can seem to never escape from.
I didn’t know what to expect from this film. On the one hand, it is coming off the back of the commercial and critical success of Halloween (2018) which acted as a soft reboot, but on the other hand, it is a modern-day horror film, and they are so hit and miss. Unfortunately, the film turned out to land more on the side of the latter. It definitely isn’t terrible, but in terms of genuine quality, it isn’t the best. It should be said I didn’t expect it to be either. I wasn’t expecting high art from the fifth film in the Scream franchise, but it still seems appropriate to point out the issues with the film. First of all, it suffers from the same thing a lot of the soft reboots do in that the newer characters are just not all that interesting and you find yourself pining for the legacy characters. No one does a bad job with the character's performance-wise, but I just did not care about them and so the film lacks any real sense of jeopardy. It also suffers from some scripting issues. For the most part, the script is solid, but there are a few dialogue moments that feel forced or clunky. This is offset somewhat by several moments that I thought were really good bits of writing and in keeping with the tone of the franchise, but it is hit and miss. There are also several weird moments of editing where shots feel out of place or like were focusing on the wrong thing. It isn’t so jarring as to take you out of the film entirely, but they feel weird in the moment.
Now, with all that being said about the drawbacks of this film I do want to say that I had a great time with it. Like I mentioned earlier, there are some smart writing moments that fit with the franchise’s tone, and I appreciated these moments. This is especially true when it comes to the motivation of the killer which I really appreciated. It feels slightly over the top and the performances in the moment match this, but it fits with the motivations of the franchise while also being relevant for the time period and I very much appreciated that the film took that route. There are also a good few moments where I laughed. While the film doesn’t lean into the comedic aspects of the franchise as much but it still has its moments. But what I really loved about this film, and I say loved in all earnest, was Ghostface. Obviously, Ghostface isn’t so much a character as an idea, but he feels like a full-blown character in every film, and in this one, he goes fucking hard. Despite the whole franchise being rated 18, I half expected this one to be rated 15 just because that is par for the course with horror these days. But they stuck to their guns, and oh boy do they earn that 18 rating. It makes all the other films in the franchise feel tame in comparison. It just feels so brutal, and it doesn’t cut away from any of the violence either, often lingering on it. This may sound unappealing to some, but as a slasher film, I appreciated how brutal and intense they make Ghostface. And it all starts from the first moments in an opening scene that I thought was great. It does a great job of paying homage to the original film while also making it very clear that this film is not taking any prisoners in the slasher department, and as a fan of the genre I really appreciated it.
This film may or not be the second-best of the franchise, battling it out with Scream 2 (1997). There are some issues with it mostly with the technical side of the film, but I had a really good time with it. The satirical nature of the film matches the tone of the franchise but are a little hit and miss at times, and the newer characters are really uninteresting. But it really works as a fun and brutal slasher film and that is all I really wanted from it, and it does it without taking away anything from what people love about the franchise.
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