Up front, I was surprised they chose the 5th Scream movie in the franchise to go with the ‘requel’ (reboot + sequel) format since the 4th movie ‘Scre4m’ (2011) would be more in sync with the storytelling elements in introducing a new main cast etc.
But I digress.
With Ontario, Canada’s rollback to a modified stage two COVID-19 lockdown in place from Jan 5th to Jan 31st cinemas across the province were shuttered for another 26 days due to the pandemic – overlapping the release date (Jan 14th, 2022) for ‘Scream‘ (2022) and preventing Ontario cinema-goers from seeing the film for 18 days.
However, I did witness on social media that some major Scream franchise fans from Ontario drove for hours outside of the city to attend drive-in screenings – displaying a type of the fandom that was remarkably mocked within the film itself and that we witnessed the worst of in reaction to Kevin Smith’s reboot of the ‘Masters of the Universe’ franchise with ‘Revelation’ (2021).
Toxic fandom is a whole other non-review based topic though.
I’ve seen other reviewers commenting so comparatively to other films in the franchise (or purely describing the film as a project that would have ‘Wes Craven rolling in his grave’), but, little is said about the film as a contribution to the franchise – I mean, the film did have a lot of history included with the original key characters (notably still including the same cast to portray them, including Skeet Ulrich and other supporting characters from previous films accurately depicting them in character evolution from the occurrences of the films prior). It also followed the same meta-horror model of utilizing the rules of surviving a horror film (both in utilizing them to survive and breaking them in order to satisfy the evolution of the rules in a horror ‘requel’).
So let’s great real – the franchise, like horror franchises before it, has a limited scope of what it can do to produce new and interesting story elements while still maintaining the ‘structural’ story elements that support it’s own story world. Because of this (and with what happened with fan reaction to ‘Scre4m’ (2011) when too much of the structural story elements shifted away) it arguably boils down to one thing: expectation.
Personally, I watch a movie (or any audio-visual content medium) doing my damnedest to avoid as much commentary (media and public) as possible and eradicating any notions of what ‘I’ want the film or story to be. It’s hard to do (and not entirely possible every time) but it does allow me to see the content with fresh and non-expectant eyes. The aforementioned criticalness of fandom is the opposite of this behaviour – where an audience member’s preconceived or pre-determined expectations of a piece of content will most likely result in an unhappy viewing experience from those expectations not being met and it’s that frame of mind that may (or more not) ultimately ruin the experience for someone – even if it was a good story with good production.
Do I think that ‘Scream’ (2022) was a good film?
I do.
As someone who grew up watching the franchise (and has a secret love of psychological horror and slasher films) I’ve always found the Scream movies particularly interesting in how they find ways to introduce story elements that cause it’s characters to put themselves in situations that result in their death while knowing the rules of survival in a horror film.
Even the mere fact that the entire franchise pokes fun at the horror film genre by identifying the fallacies of characters in countless horror films before it while simultaneously also making fun of Hollywood and the way it recycles ideas by dumping money into sequels or reboots no matter how bad the story is (as long as it’ll still sell tickets) simply just makes it something that you know will not just be an entertaining horror film but that also ensures audience-relatability.
The new ‘Scream’ (2022) film achieves this through that real world Hollywood and fandom relatability but also ensures you still have that (or those) moments that you have during any good horror movie where you’re in your head telling the characters to turnaround, not go upstairs or go back for anything while still tensely anticipating the kill.
Stay tuned for other film review initiated industry commentary.
For now – I’ll be right back… 
★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆