Scream (2022)

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 to 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 

Starring: Melissa Barrera, Mason Gooding, Jenna Marie Ortega, Jack Quaid, Marley Shelton, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Dylan Minnette, Skeet Ulrich, Roger L. Jackson

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Writers: James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick