Second Viewing: Scream (2022)

Scream really is about what I’d expect from a modern-day Scream reboot (or re-quel, as the film keeps calling it, though this is a term that I don’t think has really caught on). It has a lot of aspects that are very similar to what we’ve seen before, beginning of course with the opening scene, which is very much an echo of the Drew Barrymore scene from the original.

When things get moving with the story, we’re dealing almost exclusively with the new characters, and most of them don’t really stand out. They’re not bad, but they don’t really stand out either. They have their moments, I suppose.

Where the movie really shines is in its utilization of its legacy characters, or at least one of them. It’s clear Courteney Cox has been under her plastic surgeon’s knife more often than her character’s been chased around by Ghostface, and Neve Campbell isn’t given enough to do, but David Arquette is truly great.

And that’s quite frankly pretty surprising for me, because of these three characters, Dewey’s always been my least favorite. But here, he’s very heroic, and seems the most realistic in how he’s dealt with the events of the previous films.

The real standout of course are the horror sequences, and this movie is definitely gorier than anything that came before it in the series. It does seem like the series finally caught up with where the horror genre had gone, though the fact that it’s aware of this makes it a bit taxing.

Yeah, the movie has something to say, but as usual with the series, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is. And while that’s always been a problem, the first film at least had a much better script than this.

Rating: 6/10