Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet
Quick Impressions:
My daughter and I were supposed to see Hamilton together in San Antonio as one of her birthday presents on Saturday, January 15th. Then we discovered to our dismay that the show had been postponed because of a Covid outbreak in the cast. (As a witty friend of mine remarked, “They shouldn’t have thrown away their shots.”)
“In the meantime,” I told her to cheer her up, “we can go to Scream on Saturday.” But then she tested positive for Covid-19 herself, and none of us could go anywhere for ten days.
But now, at long last, we did go to Scream with no further catastrophes (other than the minor hitch that my card case wasn’t in my purse). Fortunately, we’d already bought tickets through an app on my phone. And for concessions, I just dipped into the cash that my loving father gave me for my birthday the day before I left for Culver City to compete in last year’s Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. Until paying, I had forgotten that he gave me about forty dollars in ones (along with repeated admonitions never to go anywhere by myself after dark).
“I’m going to pay you in ones,” I told the concessions worker in a tone that suggested it couldn’t be helped. “I’m very sorry.” Counting out the money, I kept saying, “I’m sorry,” like Homer Simpson stealing Flanders’s place in his bomb shelter.
“You can just keep the change,” I told him apologetically. Then he shook his head and gave me $3.82 back, so apparently, I can’t count either.
I’m amazed that my thirteen-year-old agreed to be seen with me after that, but she did want that popcorn, plus we’re both huge fans of the Scream franchise. (We had a pretty epic Scream marathon with her older brother a couple of years ago that we meant to repeat in December but never got around to.)
The first Scream came out my senior year of high school, and for some reason, my mother decided our whole family should go see it. “There’s this new movie out that sounds good for families,” she told us excitedly. (That’s exactly how she pitched 90210. “I read about this new show that’s great for families.”) I don’t know where she gets her information, but our family of four loved the original Scream.
In fact, I love Drew Barrymore’s scene at the beginning so much that I always used it to introduce my classes to proposal papers when I taught rhetoric in grad school.
I love the way the original Scream combines amusing metadramatic genre dissection with genuinely gasp inducing slasher horror. None of the sequels is even remotely as good (though the second one has charms of its own). But I like the original premise and the core cast enough that I’ll reliably show up to the theater every time someone makes another entry in the series (unless I’m in quarantine).
The Good:
At one point in the middle of this movie, a trailer for another movie (that a character is watching) prompted me to realize, “Wait a minute, is the actress who plays X the same actress who plays the Y who does Z in AA?” (This would be a major spoiler, but if you know, you know.)
When I discovered that 1) X was indeed the Y who does Z in AA 2) Scream entirely intends for us to make this connection and cast this person possibly just to make a very Easter-egg-like meta joke, and 3) The movie followed through by making the joke in the most pronounced way possible, I absolutely died of glee.
Until that point, I’d been wavering back and forth, uncertain of how I felt about this installment of the series. “They’re punching the meta commentary a little too hard this time,” I thought to myself. “There’s not enough slashing, not enough suspense.”
But then that happened, and I was overwhelmed with hideous delight (and so glad I had whispered my suspicions about the casting to my daughter).
In a movie that was obviously trying (sometimes a little too hard) to return to the meta, genre-commentary heavy roots of the original, this is a master stroke of genius. I cannot think of anything even half so effective that I’ve seen in a film in a very long time. (What I mean is, this film certainly achieves what it sets out to do here. It makes me wonder about the rest of the cast. Are there other meta jokes I’m missing?)
The final third of this movie is pretty great. Up until then, it had failed to win my heart, though it certainly had my attention. (I mean, I like Scream. It doesn’t have to do much to keep me vaguely engaged.)
But once the party starts, the movie is excellent. It’s probably the best Scream since the first (though it does not come even remotely close to surpassing the first, which was much more even in quality).
As promised, stakes are high this time around, and some truly unexpected late flourishes are very welcome.
My daughter and I hope that this requel does succeed in rebooting the series. We like the new characters (even if we sometimes had difficulty identifying them in veiled discussions after the film. “I mean the sister.” “Yes, that’s who I mean, too, the sister.” “But I mean the sister of the brother.” “What other sister would you mean?” “I thought you thought I meant the sister of the sister.”)
We think there’s easily enough material for another Scream. For one thing, we thought up an alternate pair of killers as the culprits this time around, and we had it all worked out. (And we each had in mind a different pair of killers! The movie gave us another solution entirely, but each of us had a solution that would make a really great scenario, and either would work in a future installment of the series. So make more Screams, Hollywood! If you’re stuck on who the killer(s) should be in the next two films, please consult us.)
One thing I do love about this Scream is that all the new characters seem so potentially guilty. They all seem like such a bunch of (maybe not so) secret psychopaths. Any of them could be the killer. (At first I thought, “Is this just revealing a disconnect between me and today’s youth?” But then I realized, “No, the friend group in the first Scream are all extremely sus, too, and they’re my age.”) (My daughter did correctly identify a killer immediately, as soon as the person spoke.)
I was thrilled to see Melissa Barrera in this movie. I loved her in In the Heights last summer. (Aside from Abuela she was my favorite one. That moment when she says what she would do if she has the winning lottery ticket just killed me.) Mikey Madison is perfect in her part, and Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding have great brother/sister chemistry. I was happy to see Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette back (as expected since they’re advertised as the stars of the movie). We also get some other familiar Scream faces, including Skeet Ulrich, Marley Shelton, and Heather Matarazzo. (I couldn’t remember if Dylan Minnette was in Scream 4 or not (he’s not. He just seems like he’s in every movie about teens (which isn’t even true).) The original voice of Ghostface, Roger Jackson, is back, too.
Best Scene:
My favorite scene is when two characters go into the basement together to get beer. (My daughter made a very astute observation about people going into the basement for beer in this movie.) This is a well acted scene by both performers, and the movie improved about three million percent beginning here.
Best Action Sequence:
Does “the whole ending” count as an action sequence? Until the ending begins, most of the action is pretty uninspired. The hospital scene is okay (although there’s an aspect of it that doesn’t quite make sense to me). (I actually have a similar logistical question about the very first scene, and that’s why I think my incorrect ending would be better (or more complete) than the ending the actual movie gives us.) (The great part is, this movie’s ending can stand, and you can still use my ending!)
Best Scene Visually:
Hmmmm. This is not a particularly visually exciting movie. (I can’t help thinking of one gruesome moment I’ve already mentioned that I’m obsessed with (but won’t spoil).) What most caught my attention visually is how often one character gets stabbed and still keeps being fine (actually, there are two characters kind of like that, but I mean the one who doesn’t even end up in the hospital).
The Negatives:
“We’re not even going to have a fourth wall in this movie,” my daughter whispered to me as Dewey and the new kids gathered to hear a very, very, very long explanation of how requels work from Randy’s niece. “Can you handle that?”
That scene does drag on for so long. In fact, the whole beginning of the movie drags on for a very long time.
The first scene featuring Jenna Ortega’s Tara is pretty flat. (It’s not her fault. It’s just that the Drew Barrymore scene has been conspicuously better than every other opening scene in the franchise. This one has some clever updates, but it’s not scary.)
We both had a problem when Jack Quaid and Melissa Barrera were introduced. Both of them seemed so familiar, and we honestly couldn’t remember Scream 4 well enough to know if we were already supposed to be familiar with these characters or not. (I think the problem is that we’ve been seeing posters and trailers for this movie for so long. Maybe we made up our own installment of Scream featuring this cast inside our heads.)
My daughter also could not stand Jack Quaid (which made me very sad because I’ve been excited to see him in this movie ever since a category about his father’s films played out so poorly on Jeopardy!).
“Ha ha,” she kept saying flatly, oozing sarcasm, “he is so funny and charming.” (“Well, his mother is funny and charming,” I whispered sadly.)
By the end of the movie, Quaid had won her over, and I do think the performance is stronger in retrospect than during an initial watch.
The first half (maybe even the first two thirds) of the film is a little slow. And sometimes Scream feels like it’s trying a little too hard to be…what’s the word for hip that this generation uses? (My generation also doesn’t use the word hip, but like…what do you call it when you pander to teenagers but do it clumsily and look like you’re trying too hard? This movie is doing that all over the place!) (Then again, maybe that’s supposed to be a joke.) (That’s one thing about this film. It can always claim that anything is just another example of self-referential humor.)
In fairness to the movie though, while watching the first scene, I did get caught up in wondering, “Why would somebody talk to some weird random stranger?” (This always ends in terror that comes back to haunt and torment you for the rest of your days—unless it kills you.) (So maybe my own inattentiveness is to some degree to blame for my inability to connect with the earlier parts of the film.)
Overall:
The end of this movie was considerably stronger than what you would expect from the fifth film in a slasher series, and if they’re planning to reboot, I’m pleased with the new cast. My daughter already can’t wait to see Scream again, and as soon as we find the time, we’re planning to re-watch all the films in the series.