Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you're all keeping well and looking after yourselves! My first review of 2022, I hope you enjoy reading!
Teenager Tara is enjoying an evening alone at home when a nuisance caller is revealed to be a copycat killer from Woodsboro's past, breaking into the house and brutally attacking her. She's extremely lucky and manages to survive to tell the tale, but why her, and how come she's still alive? After a family secret comes to light another friendship group is slowly but surely ripped apart by death, distrust and revelations that could explain the connections, but not necessarily the motivations. A few faces from the past volunteer their assistance to put the legacy to rest in what they hope will be for good.
Tara is hospitalised following the attack and her friends decide to contact Sam, her estranged sister and a runaway who abandoned her family following a discovery that shook her to the core. Sam's return doesn't go down well with the locals, with law enforcement solidifying their stance on where she does or does not belong. Sam decides to come clean to her sibling and they begin to realise why she might have been targeted. With the help of an older, more experienced Woodsboro citizen, Sam seeks to find the answers as to who might be behind the mask, and who else they might be targeting in this so called "requel".
So opinion time. Personally, I'm getting tired of a re-hash, a reboot, a new version of an old film. This film is such an outlier because the killer isn't the same in every movie. Freddy Krueger, Friday 13th, Halloween, they all had the same killer who was never beaten. This franchise spun the sequel idea on it's head in the first film where they killed the two villains. Each time a new person took the mantle of Ghostface, leaving poor Sidney Prescott and the gang to suss it out and start all over. So why, 25 years later, does this keep on happening? Let's look at the previous sequels.
Scream 2: The premise of this movie is that whilst Sidney might have left Woodsboro, Woodsboro hasn't left her. The movie Stab has been released, and it's a retelling of the horrors that took place in the first movie, with the first official killings of Scream 2 starting in a movie theatre which it's being screened at. Confusing, right? The students who end up being attacked from the college campus Sidney now attends are all people who share a name with one of the original victims of Ghostface. Dewey and Gale pay a visit to investigate and assist where possible, but this killer is far more violent and outlandish with their murders.
Scream 3: The Stab franchise is now up to it's third movie, and once again we have a copycat, this time murdering the actors who portray the characters of the third movie. A movie within a movie, with killings similar to previously and a murderer who has somehow discovered Sidney's new job as a crisis councillor, leaving Sidney no choice but to come of her secluded, isolated home and venture to Hollywood. She finds Dewey working on the set of Scream 3 and Gale Weathers soon joins the two protagonists. The man behind Ghostface, Roman, is Sidney's half brother who Maureen Prescott had given birth to whilst in Hollywood. It's ascertained that Roman was the person to tell Billy Loomis of his father and Maureen's secret relationship and is in fact the reason why the cycle with Ghostface began in the first place. Maureen had been approached by Roman in a bid to become acquainted with his birth mother, but she didn't want to take on the role of mother for a child she became pregnant with due to rape. Surely we've now come full circle? ...
Scream 4: On the eve of Sidney Prescott's self-help book promotion at the local book store in Woodsboro, two high school students are murdered by someone in a Ghostface mask. The murders keep coming as they usually do, until somebody susses out the killer. In this film the plot centres around the rules of remakes, as explained by some of the characters. In a twist of events we find a peculiar reveal, whereby Sidney's cousin is one of two killers, and she intends to purvey herself as the sole survivor in a series of killings that she is framing on another teen. When will the people of Woodsboro just let this decades old story end?
After my short recap, let's look at the latest instalment. From Scream 2 onwards it's been clear that these movies veered from your typical horror slasher movie and took a comedic turn. The addition of humour to a serious film helps to calm the audience, making the thrills all the more surprising. When you watch a horror you're typically on the edge of your seat the whole movie through, but I don't find that to be the case with the Scream franchise. I also find that the score for this movie really denotes when you should expect something to happen, but it doesn't. It's like a cruel, sick way of making the audience prepare themselves only to be given a true fright about 30 seconds later. What you think might happen doesn't, and then what does happen isn't what you're expecting. Very clever! I don't know that absolutely everything that happened was necessary mind you, but you'll have to watch the movie to find out why. I think previously the killers have been meticulous and very specific with their murders, but this time it was a little sloppy which I found didn't really fit the bill. I did love just how fighty Tara was though, she is a little bundle of joy for sure, and I think helped to highlight something I hate about slasher flicks - just how easy it is to kill people. "Don't go upstairs!" you'll shout at the TV, or "Don't turn your back on them!" Right before they run around a corner into a room that has two access points. I want clever potential victims, or people who can defend themselves better. I gather it's the element of surprise with the murderers that helps their cause, but come on!
It was actually the story that let this movie down. The characters describe the killings as a "requel", a reboot and sequel combined. This movie is definitely a sequel and not a reboot, but it brought me to a thought process I had previously chosen to ignore. The lack of originality in Hollywood. People are struggling for ideas for movies it seems, as there are so many 80s and 90s movies which are returning to pop culture thanks to their reboots and sequels. Jay & Silent Bob Reboot actually covered this topic too. I'm unenamoured with the whole situation if I'm totally honest. Don't get me wrong, the nostalgia really gets you in the feels, but I'm also pining for something completely new and different. And if it doesn't work on the big screen, just take a punt with a TV show. Chucky is a great example of this. I think if it wasn't for this movie ringing true about the constant reboot/remake thing Hollywood has turned to, I probably would have rated it higher. But because of how annoyed I am by the whole thing IRL it actually did irk me that the movie touched upon it. Sad, I know, but I think if this had of been in the movie and it wasn't yet as much of an issue as it is now, I'd have thought it was HILARIOUS. So this became a little bit of a rant, but it was the biggest reason as to why the movie lost points, it really hit home!
Anyways, if you've seen the rest you should definitely watch this one, and let's hope for all of our sakes that there isn't another, and it can finally be put to rest.
Review by CB
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