Each generation reinvents the horror genre, a genre which, like it's classic villains, never truly dies... In the 90s, just as the Freddies and Jasons started to get stale, Kevin Williamson came along with his self aware, referential take on slasher films. It revitalized horror movies and set them on a new path (for better or worse in light of what would follow (I Know What You Did Last Summer??, Scary Movie?? maybe even Saw??). But for what it was for a moment, it was revolutionary.
Legendary director Wes Craven was recruited to tell a whole new story, one that played with our expectations, inverting the conventions of the genre he helped popularize, and still importantly, scare us. Craven and Williamson pulled it off, creating a new sensation. The ideas in Scream attracted big stars (of the day) and then killed them off quickly to undermine our sense of security. It laced the script with references to horror movies, discussions of how they typically play out (the "rules"), and the broke them both paying tribute and reinventing the genre. It asked us to consider what it is we are watching and why, perhaps reflect more than we typical did during these sorts of films. All this while still delivering the thrills that attracts us to slasher films in the first place.
Looking back the first films are very much a product of their time. While they play with certain ideas, they leave other things on the table. Everyone in the first film is straight and white for example. Plus the film might love its premise a little too much. Sometimes the constant referrals to film tropes takes us out of the movie too much, perhaps functioning as the safety value that these films need. We can laugh at it because we know it's not real. And perhaps the impact is muted for that reason.
Because the films do deal with some horrifying things. The initial murder, which has become infamous as classic cinema, is damn scary and truly damn horrible. Parents discover their teen daughter brutally murdered. It is so impactful that when people think Scream they think of this scene which ends up being a very small part of the story. The murder of Pinkett-Smith's character in the second film is quite disturbing when you think about it, being mauled in front of a cheering crowd. But the films try to get around this with all the irreverence.
As almost always happen the third film suffers from diminishing returns. Scream 3 embraces this idea and once again ensures it explores issues relating to trilogies and the challenges in stretching out stories or trying to create satisfying conclusions. However the film loses some of its awareness in playing with horror conventions in the first place. 3 just never quite keeps up with its predecessors' cleverness. The film leans more into the camp that many of the newer horror films inspired by Scream were deploying. But it did at least, in its very self-aware way, wrap up the story and series, by employing the tropes of the typical third film in any series. Then perhaps inevitably it would all be reopened again eleven years later in a previously unplanned fourth film.
So does a series of movies which explore the nature of the slasher genre end? Or, like the genre itself, must it keep going like the killers of these films that just cant seem to die? 11 years later a fourth Scream was released... but how do you keep the formula fresh? Well the approach here is to ratchet up the meta qualities of the series. Instead of the franchise's signature opening, the film keeps faking us out with cold opening after cold opening. The in-world story has evolved to include the movies being made about these movies' stories. 4 leans into what should feel like cliche by now to deconstruct itself.
Scre4m does find something new to add into the mix. The first Scream was very much a product of its time, self-aware, referential, and cynical. It is the quintessential Gen X slasher. But now time as passed and as with everything the world has moved on. 4 embraces the generational shift, the Millennial critique if you will and their penchant for more sincere horror. But for me it's the weakest of the bunch. It devolves from its attempts at deconstruction to become the most traditional horror movie horror movie of the bunch. It's far more straight up stalker/slasher than the previous films. It still works but is just less interesting.
If anything the meta-ness of the fourth film is about how attempting to make an older series relevant again by sticking to the formula can not work well, and in its weaknesses it shows this. So could a fifth film be able to overcome this hurdle and give us a reason to scream again?
2022's Scream is as self conscious as the rest of the series. In it the characters advise us that this is a "requel" a sequel that focuses on new characters but keeps the original story going by including some legacy characters... and someone from the past has to die to show the real stakes. This latest Scream is in and out a Scream movie, following the formula and pushing all the buttons. It even gets meta in how it talks about toxic fandom and the way we deconstruct these legacy movies evaluating them on impossible scales of nostalgic perfection. It does being another Scream well.
But what it doesn't do is reinvent. I guess if it aint broke don't fix it. But for all the talk about taking chances with a franchise, this film takes none. It does exactly what it should, following all the rules. There are thinly veiled references to the polarizing reaction to The Last Jedi (so thin... so thin...) but Scream 2022 is no Last Jedi. It sticks to what it does well and doesn't veer off the path.
But does it establish a new generational passing of the torch? The film (again very self-consciously) establishes itself as a Gen Z movie in the way Scre4m was a Gen Y movie. Shouting out the "elevated horror" of Jordon Peele, The Babadook, or The Witch (all made by Xennials or Gen Xers I may add) this Scream establishes it is not that. This is about trying to set Scream's sardonic approach for a new generation. But maybe this generation is not about those films. Maybe they're more about the Conjuring universe. Something more ethereal. Can a Scream work for them? I'm not sure the new heroes at the centre of this restart can capture an audience's passion in the long term.
So maybe this is just a chapter that will be reinvented in a new Scream (I mean there are 3 movies called Shaft so why not three named Scream?) when the post-Gen Z generation is ready for their take on it. Or when Hollywood thinks they are...
Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Scre4m, Scream (2022)
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Roger L. Jackson, Jamie Kennedy, Liev Schreiber, Drew Barrymore, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laurie Metcalf, Patrick Dempsey, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin, Marley Shelton, Scott Foley, Jenny McCarthy, Rose McGowan, Lance Henrickson, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant, Omar Epps, Adam Brody, Anthony Anderson, Mary McDonnell, Tori Spelling, Luke Wilson, Heather Graham, Emily Mortimer, Parker Posey, Anna Paquin, Kristin Bell, Henry Winkler, Patrick Warburton, Duane Martin, Elise Neil, Hayden Panettiere, Portia de Rossi, Lawrence Hecht, Carrie Fisher, Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Jenna Marie Ortega, Jack Quaid, Dylan Minnette
Directors: Wes Craven, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Writers: Kevin Williamson, Ehren Kruger, James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick
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