![]() ![]() The degree to which this new movie impresses you will likely depend on how clever and original you think the meta humour in the original film is. She’s severely wounded, but survives in order to move forward the plot and provide commentary that brutal violence is fine to show on screen these days (the attack is much more violent than in the original film) so long as there’s no delight in the death of an innocent. For instance, instead of threatening her boyfriend, the caller threatens Tara’s friend, Amber (Mikey Madison) when quizzed about slashers, Tara says she only watches “elevated horror,” movies with supposed real stakes and thematic takeaways. Instead, it offers a variation on the original film’s opening in order to show how horror has changed over the years. This new movie doesn’t try to out-meta past entries (it’s unlikely anything would ever get more movie-within-a-movie than the opening of Scream 4). Arguably, none of the sequels do this better than Scream 2, where Jada Pinkett Smith (pre Smith) attends a movie premiere of Stab, the movie-within-the-movie based on the original film, and critiques its racial dynamics and tired use of slasher tropes before being terrorized and then killed by a killer in a ghost mask. And every new movie tries to outdo the cleverness of the original, which points out genre tropes while also using them to throw the viewer off-guard. It simply amplifies them.Įvery new Scream movie starts with a riff on the first film’s iconic opening, in which Drew Barrymore (the film’s biggest star at the time) answers the phone call of a mysterious stranger, is teased and terrorized over the phone, and then brutally murdered by a killer in a ghost mask. Turning that self-awareness and self-critique up to 11 doesn’t break the mechanisms of storytelling. And unlike in many other requels (such as The Matrix Resurrections or the new Candyman), the meta aspect of the film fits within the storyworld of Scream. The way that a grizzled, older Dewey, no longer sheriff, comes into the story mimics Han Solo’s appearance in The Force Awakens gruff reluctance giving way to mentorship and heroism. The structure not only mimics the beats of the original film-which isn’t all that complex-but also plays to beats of other requels like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and David Gordon Green’s Halloween (which are both namechecked in the movie). It’s impressive how dedicated the movie is to every little aspect of the Hollywood requel. And then there are the original heroes themselves, Neve Campbell’s Sidney Presccott, Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers, and David Arquette’s Dewey Riley, who show up to help the new characters solve the mystery. There are new characters who slot into the same functions as the old ones-Samantha Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) is the heroine with a troubled past, like Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in the original her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) is the first victim, like Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker Tara’s friends, Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown), are the movie buffs who understand the tropes of the genre, like Jamie Kenendy’s Randy and so forth. And surprisingly (or not, depending on your affection for the series), the approach works very well, with brutal kills, clever twists, and a lot of laughs to break up the tension. The movie’s title is even the same as the 1996 original, demonstrating the movie’s commitment to the bit. The movie is a self-conscious exercise in autocritique: it is upfront about being a Hollywood requel made for crass commercial reasons, while also using its commitment to being a requel to comment on the industry as a whole. The new Scream movie from Ready or Not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (also known as Radio Silence) is both an example of and a direct engagement with the proliferation of legacy sequels-or requels (reboot sequels), as this movie terms them-in Hollywood. Considering the current state of affairs, there’s likely no better franchise to mine this moment than Scream, the clever meta slasher series designed to comment on contemporary Hollywood trends as much as to scare viewers. Obviously, the popularity of such films speaks to the dearth of originality in Hollywood at this current moment. We live in a movie culture flush with legacy sequels, such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens or The Matrix Resurrections, which continue popular franchises by bringing back old characters, introducing new ones, and retreating to familiar narrative beats in order to capitalize on audience members’ memories and nostalgia. ![]()
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