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Why is Hollywood so afraid to number their sequels nowadays, or even use subtitles? Back in the day, studios weren’t afraid to release movies with titles like Police Academy 6: City Under Siege or Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. A number and a subtitle helped everyone understand which movies you had to see first to fully understand the new one. Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen a whole slew of sequels released where it isn’t even clear they are sequels. Halloween (2018) sounds like another remake, but it is a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s Halloween. The Suicide Squad is a direct sequel to a movie called Suicide Squad.
And they wonder why the box-office results disappoint.
Scream (2022) also goes down that route. The working title was simply Scream 5, and I think 5cream was even considered at one point. But the end product is simply titled Scream—the same title as the first film in the franchise. I’m not blaming people who go into this movie thinking it’s a remake or reboot of the original, though the floating aging heads of Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette on the poster should inform them otherwise.
Scream is what the characters in the movie call a “requel”; not quite a sequel, not quite a reboot. These legacy sequels, as they are also called, have been a thing over the last couple of years, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ghostbusters: Afterlife being the most notable examples. The premise is simple: insert a group of fresh faces into an existing universe, bring back a couple of the original characters to pass the torch, and in some cases kill them off for dramatic effect. If done successfully, the franchise gets a whole new lease on life.
As always, Scream is exactly what it is commenting on at the same time. The first movie was both a slasher and a deconstruction of slashers. The second was both a sequel and a comment on sequels. This film is well aware of being a requel and the rules that come with it. At the same time, David Arquette’s Dewey functions as a reminder of the rules from previous movies. He brings the new young cast up to speed. Not surprisingly, they have a movie nerd among them who explains the rules of the requel. This should have been Dewey’s cue to leave town, since longtime cast members now have the option of going down the Han Solo route.
Speaking of the new cast, they are the politically correct bunch of diverse characters you now see in almost every TV show or movie. Where 1996’s cast of Scream was a group of white heterosexual suburban teens, 2022’s Scream features a multi-ethnic cast and doesn’t forget to include a couple of gay main characters as well. They don’t go as far as shoehorning in transgender or non-binary characters like almost every Netflix or HBO show seems to do, but it is pretty obvious they are keeping up with the times.
But the new cast fails to make much of an impression on me. Two days after watching, I couldn’t remember a single character’s name save for Wes, who was obviously named after original creator Wes Craven. He is also played by Dylan Minnette, the most recognizable cast member thanks to hit shows like 13 Reasons Why. This is also the first movie not directed by Craven or written by Kevin Williamson. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett do a good job mimicking his style and do everything they can to make the film not stand out too much in terms of style and direction.
The story is more or less the same as in the previous movies, especially the first one. A teenager is attacked by a man in a Ghostface costume after playing an unsolicited game of horror movie trivia. She surprisingly survives the ordeal but ends up in the hospital. This prompts her estranged older sister and her boyfriend to return to Woodsboro. She reconnects with her sister’s friends and, with Dewey’s help, tries to figure out who is behind the mask.
They also bring back Sidney (Neve Campbell) and Gale (Courteney Cox), respectively 47 and 57. They are so well adapted to these situations by now that they at least bring a gun to a knife fight. They are also able to shrug off stab and gunshot wounds to the stomach at this point. They just walk it off, basically, and I’m not even exaggerating.
I’m not going to spoil the identity of the killer for you, but the reveal is a cheat. The person playing Ghostface is a stuntman, of course, but in the previous movies the reveal of the killers’ identities always made sense and corresponded with Ghostface’s stature. That is not the case here, and some of the things Ghostface does are physically impossible for the person revealed to be the killer. So you’re almost bound to guess wrong.
Scream is a decent addition to the franchise and taps into the whole requel phase we’re in with ease. But in the end, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table and fails to pass the torch to a new cast of characters. If there is another sequel in a couple of years and it follows the surviving new cast members, I may have no choice but to go back to this movie and refresh my memory. Because in the end, this movie just isn’t memorable enough.
