I haven't kept up with the "Scream" movies after seeing the original, and don't have much nostalgia for this franchise. However, I noticed that the newest entries featured Jenna Ortega and Jack Quaid, and it had been an awfully long time since I'd seen Neve Campbell or Courtney Cox in anything, so I decided to take a look.
I immediately remembered why I didn't much enjoy the first movie. "Scream" has always been a traditional slasher series, which means we spend a lot of time watching attractive people running around and getting killed off in gruesome ways. There are jump scares and big reveals that require a lot of suspension of disbelief. Ghostface is also one of those killers who won't shut up - their whole schtick is that they spend at least as much time taunting their victims as they do trying to cause them physical harm. "Scream" distinguished itself by being the franchise that was self-aware, but these movies have gotten so meta that they're in danger of eating themselves.
The 2022 "Scream," which I will refer to as "Scream V" to avoid further confusion, serves as a reboot/sequel or "requel," as the movie puts it. Our main characters are a pair of sisters, Samantha Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega), who find themselves being targeted by a new Ghostface. Their friend group includes characters played by Jack Quaid, Dylan Minette, Mikey Madison, Kyle Gallner, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mason Gooding. They seek help from the survivors from the first movie - Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), her ex husband Dewey Riley (David Arquette), and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). It turns out that Samantha and Tara have ties to the original Ghostface, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), which may be tied to the new killer's motive.
The meta elements mostly come from a horror movie series that exists within the "Scream" universe called "Stab," which many of the characters are fans of and discuss constantly. There's endless monologuing about various tropes and filmmaking sins, to the point where it stops being fun and gets very tedious. However, the writers do play fair and have the extreme fandom around "Stab" tie into the motives of the killer. So the villain was the audience all along! The best parts of "Scream V" are when the material is actually played straight, and we have some nice moments with Dewey and Gale reconnecting. The actual thrills and kills don't do much for me, though I like that Ghostface's primary female targets are more aggressive and willing to fight than the scream queens of older horror movies.
"Scream VI" is a step down, taking the survivors from "Scream V" and moving the action to New York City. This allows for a big attack sequence on a subway train, but otherwise doesn't factor into the story much. Hayden Panetierre, Samara Weaving, Tony Revolori, and Dermot Mulroney show up, and some of them are red herrings, and some of them aren't. Courtney Cox is the only actor from the original "Scream" who bothers to make an appearance. Again, unstable "Stab" fans are behind the newest round of Ghostface killings, but the meta is thankfully reduced to only one character, who keeps reminding everyone else that nobody is safe in horror franchise movies now, not even the main characters. There's also one good in-joke, where Panetierre being an FBI Agent is called out as being highly dubious.
I don't think I'll watch future installments of the "Scream" franchise. These two latest installments aren't bad for what they are, but I'm not getting much entertainment value out of what they offer. Still, credit should go where credit is due. I find the self-aware bits mostly grating, but at least the fundamentals of pretty girls fending off stabby creeps are pretty solid. The movies also understand what they are, and never try to get too full of themselves, the way those last two "Halloween" movies did. "Scream" is very much a franchise that is ongoing, and has consistently featured some good talent and a good attitude about its place in pop culture. It's the only slasher series left that really feels like it's trying to stay current, even if it's not always successful.
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