Scream (2022)

*SPOLIERS AHEAD*

The time is finally here. The new film that I have been waiting years for. Pre-announcement of a new Scream film being made years. I genuinely thought that a fifth installement wouldn’t be made, so I guess we owe a huge thanks to Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett for being able to pull it off and honour Wes Craven at the same time.

Twenty five years after the original Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) Ghostface killings, Ghosty’s back again, and this time, not after Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) as his main victim, but instead, he’s targeting people who seem to be releated to the original killers. This film is the first of the five to not include a death in the opening scene, with Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) surviving her attack, which is what draws her sister, Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) back to Woodsboro after leaving about 5 years earlier when she was 18, and her reason for leaving did leave me shocked, but I still don’t know how I feel about it. It might be a bit too far fetched, I still haven’t made my mind up.

Of course, the film has to start with a phone call from Ghostface, and all I could think about during the phone call was whether it was hinting to a character from Scream 4 (2011) having survived. During said phone call, Ghostface takes on the persona of who Tara thinks might be her mother’s new boyfriend, but he’s called Charlie. Who else is called Charlie? Rory Culkin in Scream 4. Charlie Walker. One of the two killers in the film. I know it probably isn’t the case of him having survived, but I can’t lie and say that this wasn’t all I was thinking about during the scene after his name was said.

After her attack, Sam, living in Modesto, California with her boyfriend Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid), finds out about Tara’s attack through Wes Hicks (Dylan Minnette) and makes her long awaited return to Woodsboro to unkowingly receive the Sidney Prescott experience.

Soon after her arrival, we are introduced to the new cast, Wes, Amber Freeman (Mikey Madison), Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and Liv McKenzie (Sonia Ammar) shortly before Ghostface claims his first victim in the shape of Vince Schneider (Kyle Gallner), Liv’s ex boyfriend, and later revealed, Stu Macher’s nephew. Personally, I think Gallner was included for the sole reason of adding a body to the body count and add the small bit of current boyfriend/ex-boyfriend drama we got. His death was a good one, and the chill’s I felt when Red Right Hand started playing was absolutely unmatched!

Next, it seems that Ghostface is after Sam, I thought that when she stood back up from the sink, he was going to be standing behind her, but who was was a completely different shock all together. Who was it, you may ask? Only Billy bloody Loomis! I absolutely knew that Skeet Ulrich was going to be involved in this film one way or another, but I never could have guessed that this was how! I reacted the same way as I did when Andrew Garfield came through that portal in No Way Home last month. He gives Sam an ominous urge to tell Tara why the attacks are happening, and when she does, she isn’t the only one who is shocked. I mean, I could have guessed it if I tried hard enough, but I still don’t know how I feel about it if I’m being honest. We all knew that Billy had to have had an affair and have a secret kid out there, but Sam was not the one I had in mind. My money was always on Wes. While I was excited for Skeet to be back on the screen, I’m still not behind the CGI. It just didn’t look right when they tried to de-age him. Don’t get me wrong, Skeet is a handsome man, but the CGI did him dirty, but it was, is nice the right word? I don’t know. It was good to see him in his Billy Loomis 90’s get up again.

I would never have guessed that Billy would have made an appearance before Sidney, Gale (Courteney Cox), or Dewey (David Arquette), but here we are, and shortly after, Sam and Richie pay Dewey a visit, where he lives alone, seemingly no longer with Gale, like we all suspected, but you can tell that he still loves her, no matter what has happened between them in the eleven years since Scream 4 (2011). He doesn’t seem to be coping well, so when he is asked to help them find and stop the killer, he, rightfully so, kicks them out. He’s had enough bother from Ghostfacce in the past, and it is understandable that he doesn’t want anything to do with another copycat.

After Sam and Richie leave, Dewey gets in touch with Sidney, telling her that it’s happening again, and here, we also learn that she is married with children to Mark, presumably Kincaid (Patrick Dempsey) from Scream 3 (2000), which is another nice, subtle call back to the earlier films. Dewey being Dewey, however, changes his mind and meets Sam and Richie at the Meeks-Martin household to help the group take down Ghostface. One thing I loved about this whole scene was the Randy home cinema memorial. I love that they’re still acknowledging characters from the original films. I also loved the Heather Matarazzo cameo as Martha, Randy’s sister and Chad and Mindy’s mother. I had a feeling she’d have a little cameo in the film, and I kinda loved that she called them all suspects.

One character that I didn’t know how I would feel about was Mindy, but I left the cinema so in love with her. She is literally Randy 2.0, and even accuses Sam of being Ghostface, after spilling out her rules for a “requel” to the group. Not quite a sequel, not quite a reboot. 1) requel might just be my new favourite piece of film terminology, and 2) I love how this movie was as meta as it could be. You’d think a movie which was this self aware would come across as cringy, but I never felt it one. I love it!

After Sam being accused of being Ghostface, our next victims soon meet their fate. Judy (Marley Shelton) and Wes. I can’t tell you how pissed I was that Wes was killed. This might be a heavily bias opinion though, as I do quite like Dylan Minnette, and had my money on him either being Billy’s son or having something to do with the attacks. I can’t believe they’d do Wes Craven like that! I’m joking, he would have probably loved it. The build up to Wes’ murder was very tense, with the old ‘are they behind the door’ being used quite a number of times, but he was never behind the door, but behind him instead, and stabbed him right though the neck. A bit gruesome, but hey ho.

The hospital scene that had everyone theorising about in the trailer was actually quite a tense, one, with people being right about it being Tara in the wheelchair while Ghostface “chases” after her. Chases isn’t really the right word, as he did a Michael Myers paced walk behind her trying to wheel herself away in her chair, but at the same time Sam was on the phone, stalling for time so that she and Dewey could get to her floor and save her.

This scene was the first where I had a solid theory as to who Ghostface could be, and I was right, and it was a callback to Scream 2 (1997), but I’ll get back to it later.

This scene also killed off a much loved character. Dewey was never the brightest bulb in the box, but I never actually thought that one of the Woodsboro trio would be killed off. He went back to shoot Ghostface in the head to make sure that he was dead, and he’s the one who ended up dead himself. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to watch the original 4 films now, knowing he doesn’t make it out of the fifth one alive. Dewey’s death is what beings Sidney back to Woodsboro, even though she was told him not to come back. It was weird not seeing the two of them on screen together, but we did get a lovely Gale and Dewey scene after finding out Judy and Wes had been killed, which clarified why they weren’t together anymore.

Sadness aside, Sidney asks Sam to help her take down the killer, but, for the first time in horror movie history, Sam turns her down, telling her that she is leaving town with Tara and Richie, the seeminly smart decision to make, but of course, something stops that from happening and they end up where? The one and only Stu Macher’s old house. Of course. Where else to host the final act, than where it all originally went down.

Even though there is never actually an unmasking in this film, I was still shocked at the way the first Ghostface was revealed. Liv adamant that she wasn’t the killer with blood all over her, and Amber just pulling a gun out on her!? I’m sorry, what? It happened so quick, and everything about her leading up to this moment told us that she was a killer, but I thought it was too easy so I disregarded it all and thought Tara had something to do with it all.

The second killer, however, was the one I guessed during the hospital scene. When Ghostface sliced Richie’s arm, it is almost identical to when Derek was cut in Scream 2 and Randy pinned the blame on him, talking about how all major arteries and such were missed. They were clever with the clues for Richie being Ghostface, and I’m quite proud of myself that I got one fo the two.

I’m not sure how I feel about it coming back to the killer being the boyfriend and a sidekick, but I did like the fact that Amber was one of the killers, she was truly crazy, claiming that she was manipulated into helping Richie, but you can just tell that she enjoyed it too much to be coerced into doing it. Even though I’m still on the fence about Richie’s part in it all, his reveal still had shock value, and he was great at acting like the helpless victim, so even though I suspected him, it was still a shock when he stabbed Sam.

I do still think that their motive wasn’t the strongest, and I’m still not sure if I like it or not. It turns out that Richie is also a liar, as well as a murderer, claiming at the beginning of the film that he’s never seen any of the Stab films, but both he and Amber are die hard fans, having met on a forum, and their reasoning for killing was that they were disappointed in what the Stab films had become, and they wanted them to be based on true events again, like the originals. Of course, the film ends with the two killers meeting their end at the hands of our new final girls, Sam shooting Richie, and Tara shooting Amber, who ‘comes back for one final scare’, terribly burned, which reminded me of something or the other that I’ve seen, but cannot for the life of me remember.

I still have a few questions about Richie and Amber being this film’s Ghostfaces, though, and I can’t remember if they were answered or not, becasue so much gets revealed in such a short time in these films’ final acts. 1) how long had they been planning to do this for? 2) when did they meet online? 3) who had the initial idea? 4) how did they know Sam was Billy’s daughter? I know Richie said ir was a small town, but if he learned this from someone in Woodsboro, surely the gossip would have spread around town and to Tara. 5) did Billy know Sam was his daughter? Who else knew? If, on the off chance, any of these questions were answered in the film and I just missed them, I hope to catch them when I see it next.

And there we have it. All those years waiting for a new Scream film, and I’ve seen it. It was amazing. Never once did I doubt it wouldn’t be good, but I still managed to be surprised with how good it was. While I knew there was going to be a Wes Craven dedication, I never thought seeing it would make me want to cry, but it did. I just know that Matt and Tyler have done him proud. It honestly felt like something that he was involved in, and it’s sad that he wasn’t.

I’m not sure if a sixth film was to be made, that Neve and Courteney would return again. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for these films to keep being made, and I’d love to see the two of them do a Jamie Lee Curtis and keep being on screen together for years to come, but at the same time, I don’t want the films to be overdone to the point of it being repetitive and people becoming bored with them. I feel like the fact that people in this film thought the Stab franchise should have ended after the fifth one might be a sign that there are currently no talks about a sixth one being greenlit, but, this one was released 11 years after the fourth. There is always time.

Until next time?

Much love,