Thoughts on Scream (2022)

 The first Scream is one of my favorite movies of all time. It stands as an incredibly interesting piece of social history. Before Columbine, the way two boys would terrorize a student body was put on a scary mask and slash people up like they were the villain in a horror movie. Of course, after Columbine, we know exactly the way two boys would actually go about that process. 

I actually enjoy Scream 2-4. They make for a lot of fun to watch with some friends over the course of a night, but never quite hit that point of importance that the first one does for me. 

Nevertheless, I was pretty excited for this sort of reboot/legacy sequel. 

What a funny term “legacy sequel.” Don’t worry the movie has much to say about that word. In my world, there’s two kinds of legacy sequels. There’s The Predator from director Shane Black. Which is a movie I greatly dislike for thinking it’s somehow smarter and better than the thing it’s following. Then, there’s the new Halloween series by David Gordon Green which understands that the slasher genre cannot exist in the same way it did in the 70s. The way humans can hurt each other isn’t just relegated to stalking around and killing ten people in a night. Now, ten people could be killed in an instant. 

Sorry for the dark turn. 

I don’t think Scream (2022) is as bad or weirdly mean to its predecessor as The Predator is, but it’s also not interested in evolving its subgenre as much as Green’s new Halloween series. It sits somewhere boringly in the middle. 

I think Scream (2022) misses the meta point. The reason why the meta-humor and meta-text of the original works so well are because most of the movies they’re referencing to our directed by Wes Craven. You know the guy who’s directing this movie you’re watching now. 

He’s as in on the joke as we are and therefore we’re all laughing together. 

It’s not this new movie’s fault that Wes passed away but damn if you don’t feel the lack of his presence here. We get this long speech about how new horror movies are so much smarter and we’re bombarded with names of movies we’ve all probably seen that are apart of this “elevated horror” movement (bleh). I think this movie is trying to say that a horror movie that is just textual is as good as they other movies. Well, of course it is but I don’t think it’s fair to call the original Scream this sort of lower rung of horror. 

The performances across the board range from fun to really boring. Except for David Arquette he rules and I won’t hear anything to the contrary.  

Anyway, watch the original it’s so good. Thanks for reading.