Matthew Brady's Movie Review of Scream (2022)

Should’ve been called 5cream.
Matthew Brady - wrote on 03/22/22

“Well, maybe you're the killer. Because that cut deep.”

Scream (2022) takes the meta, “requel” approach that seems to be getting popular in modern franchise movies. For those who don’t know; “requel” basically means when a movie revisits sections from an earlier film, for example, a well-known movie franchise, but is technically not a remake. However, I feel this trend will eventually be tired out, but I feel it makes more sense with the ‘Scream’ franchise with its commentary.

So, this movie brings in the new but also brings back the old to the series. The legacy characters make a return and are well respected. Neve Campbell isn’t featured as much this time around, which means she’s not the focus of the story. Campbells and Courteney Cox
have a great team-up scene that was a personal highlight for me. Campbell also has the best line in the whole movie during the climax, “Enjoy that torch”.

The new cast of characters was fine, and the performance was all decent. David Arquette was surprisingly the standout here, as out of the cast he delivered the most memorable performance in the movie. Jenna Ortega was also great in this, especially with the dramatic scenes. I liked how this approached toxic fan-base, with the stimulus being the ‘Stab’ movies within the Scream universe, in terms of how the franchise has evolved and how “woke” it got because when you try to criticize how meta it is, you’re only proving the film's point. I think we are all familiar with toxic fan bases, so this was satisfying to watch.

If I must be honest, I’m a bit unenthusiastic about this one. I don’t know why, but maybe it’s just that I didn’t get much out of this one. While I can recognize there are good elements on the screen, and yet I felt nothing towards it. Of course, there’s going to be another one, and I just hope that it does something a lot fresher rather than walk on familiar ground, in terms of structure.