Staci Layne Wilson’s Scream review says the slasher keeps to its postmodern roots while giving the proceedings contemporary cachet.

Scream directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are a clever team of true horror aficionados—if their names don’t ring a bell, you may remember their sleeper hit, 2019’s Ready or Not—who are the perfect pair to riff on what the original director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson did with the first Scream back in 1996. The subsequent franchise had its hits and misses, but above all, it never, ever, took itself too seriously.

The first Scream came onto the scene following a slew of ’80s slashers like Friday the 13th, Child’s Play, and (Craven’s own) A Nightmare on Elm Street, with a jaundiced, critical eye. Its characters, and intended audience, were the Blockbuster generation, young folks who rented all the horror movies and knew them inside and out—and were too cool to actually be scared by the cliché-addled gorefests.

Scream (the first one; why they named this non-remake the same exact thing is beyond me) paved the way for the self-aware, post-modern stab-and-slab genre, and 26 years later, the game remains the same. The players now have cell phones and film trivia at their fingertips, but the superior attitude hasn’t changed. In the 2022 Scream, smart-home gadgets, GPS apps, and cloning software are all tools at the disposal of Ghostface. (Ghostface, unlike supernatural slayers Chucky, Jason, or Freddy, is always a human donning a costume—and always a different human, at that).

Building on the blood and bone of the cynical Gen X cannon fodder from the first films, today’s Gen-Z victims are just as snarky. In the classic opening sequence, as Ghostface taunts his prey over the phone with a barrage of horror trivia questions while concurrently stalking her from just outside her front door. The teen, Tara (Jenna Ortega), informs the altered voice that she prefers “elevated horror,” reeling off titles like Heredity and The Babadook as superior to the silly Stab (aka Scream) flicks. While the meta thing does get a bit monotonous as the rather self-satisfied film goes on, at least it’s far more exciting than the also self-referential, but super-talky, Matrix Resurrections.

While Scream focuses mostly on Tara and her until recently estranged sister, Sam (Melissa Berrera), who come together to fight the relentless phantom, there’s also a cast of suspects and familiar faces from the franchise. Gayle Weathers (Courteney Cox), Dwight “Dewey” Riley (David Arquette), Sheriff Deputy Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton), and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) are back, and they do a great job of bridging the gap for loyal fans and newbies. It’s also fun to see Mikey Madison, who was so fired up as Manson Family girl Sadie in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, playing Amber, a frenzied horror film fan.

While the kills are not especially scary or affecting, the squeamish may want to avoid this one. It is quite gory and the effects give one a microscopic view of what happens when cold steel meets warm flesh. If you are a fan of the Scream films, however, I encourage you to check this one out. It’s fun, fast-paced, and has a great cast.

Counterpoint Scream review by Lisa Johnson Mandell

The Scream review above was written by Staci Layne Wilson, one of Hollywood’s foremost horror authorities, and she knows far more about the Scream franchise than I  ever will. But coming into this version with only a passing interest, I have to say I found it far too meta for its own good, confusing to all but the most avid franchise aficionados.

Waffling back and forth between a sequel and a re-make (what the characters smugly call a “re-quel”), we have characters from the original disconcertingly mixed with a new generation of high school kids who are fans of a parallel franchise called Stab, but also involved in it. It’s a real head spinner. Don’t even bother trying to follow the plot.

But the point of these types of films never was the plot. They’re all about the gore, the suspense and the delicious jump scares. Unfortunately, viewers are not rewarded with many of those classic devices either, although there are some fun teases.

Personally, I didn’t find these attempts at self parody and self awareness entertaining, just annoying.

Rated R
1 Hour 54 Minutes

If this SCREAM review makes you want to run to the theater to see Ghostface in all his gory glory, check for showtimes at Fandango.com

Staci Layne Wilson’s Scream review says the slasher keeps to its postmodern roots while giving the proceedings contemporary cachet.