Sixteen More Screams For Halloween: Day 12 (Scream [2022])

THESE BETTER BE YOUR FAVORITE
SCARY MOVIES!!!

Man, oh man. If ever there were a fucking horror movie to watch a few scant hours before Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who tenure comes to a close. I don't know what I was expecting going in to another take on Scream, perhaps the meta-slasher series of them all. I kind of hoped that, without the late Wes Craven, the movie still had something interesting to say like the others did. I have neglected to cover Screams 3 and 4 on the blog, but I remember them vaguely. I liked the killer twist of Scream 4, but that's about all that sticks out a decade later. Anyway, all of this is to say that this new Scream floored me. It almost flawlessly updates its sly knowing meta-slasher status for the modern age, delivering a film that had me hooting and hollering. Let's not run down the whole damn thing. Let us be quick and cutting, like the swift motion of a blood-stained knife wielded by a ghostfaced maniac.

This movie is to the prior Screams as the Star Wars sequel trilogy is to the rest of its franchise. It's all fucking there, twisted like a carnival fun house mirror into a grotequese blood-spattered monster. A new cast of characters, a next generation on from the original survivors of the killing sprees. Those original characters, back again as the wisened old generation to advise and pass the torch on to the young blood (Please keep that "pass the torch" phrasing in mind.) Hell, David Arquette is just Harrison Ford in The Force Awakens here, down to every detail. A loveable protagonist of the old guard who fell into destitute hard times between generations, who separated from his lover, is drawn back into the misadventures of the new guard... and then is killed by a masked madman after he can't resist going back for one last confrontation. It's the tragic loss of a legacy character, one hell of a death scene for David Arquette, and we feel that loss after five of these movies.

Which brings me to the other thing, the notion of feeling and emotion. See, The Force Awakens takes Star Wars, which under George Lucas was a mishmash of various genres and tones, and mishmashes bits and pieces of itself together to create a fucked-up nostalgia ouroboros. At first, in the opening which directly parallels Drew Barrymore's from 1996, it seems like this is what the movie is doing. Instead of the killer on the phone asking about Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, he's asking trivia questions about the Stab movies; Scream's in-universe slasher series adaptations of the various Ghostface killing sprees. Yes, the fact that in-universe Scream turns a bunch of real crime sprees where real people were murdered into trope-laden slasher films is just a bit ghoulish and fucked-up. I noted that when I wrote about Scream 2, which opens on a cinema crowd hooting and hollering at the original Stab, a film based on real events where real people died. Back then, it was a sick and twisted reflection of slasher movie fandom, just raising the artifice enough to show that it's a little fucked up how many people enjoy murder movies.

And then this film really impressed me. The killing spree of this film, as theorized by the Jamie Kennedy equivalent in the movie, is a sadistic attempt at revitalizing Stab. We find out the killers and their motive in Act 3, and it is a fucking doozy. Scream has always been really, shockingly good at making its killers just the most depraved sociopathic monsters who are deluded enough to believe their killing sprees are a just cause, and that all their victims deserved their violent and horrific deaths. This new film is no exception. The duo of killers, one a crazed horror movie fan and the other the protagonist's boyfriend in a surprise heel turn. Say, doesn't this sound familiar? Why, it sounds to me like a fucked-up redo of the first film's killer twist. Now who would be so unoriginal as that, to just redo the old thing again?

Hardcore toxic fans, that's who. This pair of monsters are massive Stab fans who were incensed at Stab 8, a film directed by "the Knives Out guy" which committed the unforgivable sin of daring to deviate from the classic Stab formula. These fans are so dedicated that they created their own killing spree, this one faithful and reverent to the original 1996 killing spree with the return and murder of its legacy survivors, which will no doubt inspire a blockbuster movie which will finally get Stab back on the right track to what it is supposed to be: a series of true crime murders committed by a ghost-faced killer in Woodsboro with legacy characters coming back to be killed again. Hell, their killer, and the set-upon protagonist of this film, has a secret backstory wherein she is the relative of an antagonist from the originals. She is the illegitimate daughter of Billy Loomis, mastermind of the original film, and who better to fancast as their evil killer? It's got to be someone with a legacy bloodline connection to an established character, after all! To have anyone original would be just plain unacceptable!

This is... Where do I even begin? They made a fucking Scream movie about toxic fandom babies who can't accept change in their franchise! They made it specifically about the Star Wars backlash! Not only is the movie already structured like that, but the whole "oh no I'm secretly related to an antagonist from the old movies" is just the Rey twist from Rise of Skywalker! Oh, and the eight movie in the franchise, directed by the Knives Out director, which set the fandom on fire with its rage? Holy fucking shit, they couldn't be more on the nose with it if they tried! In fact, they hit the nose over and over when the Jamie Kennedy equivalent explains the idea of reboots and namedrops Star Wars and Ghostbusters and everything else! Toxic entitled fans of a franchise are the fucking bad guys in this movie! The folks who made it looked at the opening to Scream 2, those hooting hollering Stab fans, and made them the antagonists of the new film!

The really fucked up thing is... Well, it's the old adage that every great antagonist considers themselves to be the protagonist of their own story. These utter sociopaths, so desperate for a new referential and reverential entry in their favorite horror movie franchise to watch and enjoy that they start their own killing spree and end the lives of several innocent human beings... these people think that they are the heroes. That since poor Sam Carpenter, illegitimate daughter of Billy Loomis, is always a villain and thus deserves to be framed and killed as the monster in their own movie. They will create the perfect sequel which they deserve, because they are True Stab Fans. Cycling back to the opening of the movie, there's an interesting thing. They taunt the girl they're about to kill for liking "elevated horror": stuff like The Babadook or It Follows or any of Ari Aster's films. Horror films which say something about the material world and aren't just exploitative trope-laden excuses to watch the lurid deaths of human beings. Just a fake horror movie fan who doesn't appreciate the true genius of Stab. SHE DOESN'T LIKE THE SAME TYPE OF MOVIE I DO! THEREFORE I DECREE THAT HER LIFE IS FORFEIT!!!

These are the people who consider themselves the protagonists of the story. I mean, Christ, at least Billy Loomis and some of the other Ghostfaces had half a claim to revenge. They were still entitled assholes, but this is a new low for Scream scumbags... and they really get theirs. The girl who they were supposed to kill in the opening act lived, and gets to beat her assailant up in the last act. The idea of "passing the torch" is used to great effect as one of the killers tries to turn on a dime and beg for her own life to Courtney Cox, who shoots her onto a lit stove as she burns to death. THE TORCH IS PASSED, HOLY FUCKING SHIT! As for Mr. Boyfriend, Mr. True Stab Movie Fan... he gets what he always deserved. He gets killed by the vengeful daughter of Billy Loomis. Taken out by a legacy character, someone important to the lore. AIN'T THAT WHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED? YEAH, PLEAD AND BEG THAT YOU'RE THE HERO AND SHE'S THE VILLAIN! THIS ISN'T YOUR MOVIE, FUCKFACE!

And that's 2022's Scream. An empathic middle finger to angry idiots online screaming about The Last Jedi and Ghostbusters 2016, holding up the funhouse mirror and cranking up the artifice and exaggeration to show the entitled malicious attitude lurking within: that the movies have to be for them at all times, and that those who attempt to divert the path of the movies not being for them, forever, are the enemy and must be killed. Scream 2022 and I look at them and say "fuck you.". They die in anonymity, no big Stab reboot made about them or their story. I honestly hope this is the last Scream movie, because I really don't know where you go from there. I am absolutely shook. What a film. 

Speaking of fandom and things deviating from what should be... Let me tackle the end of a run of Doctor Who I don't like with slightly more dignity and grace than the fuckers in this movie...