A Horrific Breakdown of Scream (2022)
*** THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS ****
Scream (2022) was released earlier this year and left a lot of fans questioning, is this new Ghostface worthy of the title? Was this just a half-assed reboot to appeal to a younger generation? Some people rip into the new addition to the series with a wicked blow claiming that Hollywood is doing everything it can to kill off our favorite franchises, while others praise the new creative spins that Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett did. Is this new addition to the franchise a welcome back to Woodsboro, or is it gonna get dunked right into our trashcan of horrors? Let’s find out!
Summary:
The movie opens with a classic phone call and lonely girl. Our cold open lady is Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega) and she talks with Ghostface over the phone. Ghostface at first seems more unassuming and casual, however just like the original Scream, things turn dark pretty fast. A classic Ghostface versus entrance girl chase ensues with Ghostface stabbing Tara on the ground as she is screaming.
We meet our main protagonist after this, Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), and her boyfriend Richie Kirsch (Jack Quad). They work at a bowling alley outside of Woodsboro, in Modesto. She can be seen taking pills, which we learn are some sort of antipsychotics. She gets a call from Wes Hicks (Dylan Minnette) who tells her Tara has been attacked, but is still alive. This gets Sam and Richie to go to Woodsboro.
We then meet Tara’s friend group, the main supporting characters in the film. There is Wes Hicks, who is the son to the now Sheriff Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton). There is Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding), Liv McKenzie (Sonia Ammar), and Amber Freeman (Mikey Madison).
Tara’s friend group, Richie, Sam, and Dewey meet up at Mindy and Chad’s house to discuss the possibilities. During this Mindy states the rules of a requel. Here the movie establishes how a lot of people are related to people who have come before in the movies, with the Meeks-Martin twins being connected to Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) in Scream and Scream 2.
Through the rest of the film a few characters get killed, including Dewey, and the ending party scene commences. This party is a going away party for Wes and his mother as they were murdered earlier in the film, and is hosted by Amber. This ending party scene is a little too familiar, though, as it turns out that Amber actually lives in Stu Macher’s (Matthew Lillard) house.
Sydney Prescot (Neve Campbell) and Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) are the ones to call Sam and notify her of this. Amber reveals herself to be the killer, a chase ensues. Shortly after we find out that she has a co-conspirator, and it’s Richie. The ending scene takes place. Gale and Sidney take on Amber while Sam handles Richie. They are able to kill the killers and come out without any more casualties. .
Review:
So let’s get something straight right off the bat. When doing an analysis of a franchise film, you have to take a few things into consideration. First, it is almost impossible that you are going to have a sequel that matches the greatness of the first one. A few franchises get away with this like Nightmare on Elm Street having the third sequel being a fan favorite and the Friday the 13th franchise having more success with the sequels containing the Jason Voorhees killer than the original Pamela Voorhees killer, however these are exceptions and not the rule.
With a series like Scream, however, it very much follows this rule. The original is hands down the golden standard in this franchise. Billy Loomis and Stu Macher are undoubtedly the best killer we will ever have, and the dynamic of the cast feels so much more natural in the original movie. So I am not going to directly compare this new addition to the series against this for the sole reason that if I did there wouldn’t be a single Scream sequel that would be worth watching.
We start with the trailer to this film. I’m going to be completely honest here, watching this trailer my hopes for this film being something absolutely amazing were completely shot in the face. As soon as I saw the trailer, the scene showed Tara Carpenter locking the doors to her house through an app on her phone. It also shows that someone has, what we can assume, hacked into the system and is remotely unlocking the doors.
When I saw this my first thoughts where something along the lines of, “fuck, we are just getting a Black Mirror fanfiction with Ghostface.” Months of being so amped up for a new Scream movie came crashing down all around me. The idea that some executives wanted to squeeze a few more big bucks out of a franchise I loved so much just had me crushed. I was no longer excited for the movie, and was extremely pissed off. However, I still gave this new addition a chance.
Scream (2022) starts out with a classic opening. The phone rings, a killer is on the line, and the lone victim in the house. Watching this scene made those anxieties simmer a little bit, it felt exactly how I wanted this movie to start. Even though the trailer had crushed me, sitting there in the movie theater with a massive bucket of popcorn that I shoved into my face and hearing Rodger L. Jackson’s voice was exactly what I wanted to hear. The gorey ‘kill’ scene at the end is like the cherry on top of the ice cream. A giant smile was plastered across my face, and the excitement I had when the movie was announced had returned.
Finding out that Tara hadn’t actually died in that scene was the first of many let downs that this film had to offer. Especially when the movie uses this same exact punchline multiple times for no good reason other than to say ‘oh look you thought they were dead but actually’. I could see the potential value of doing this with the opening scene kill just for the fact of making the statement that this is a different movie than the rest, however, using this punchline multiple times takes away from the intensity of what the ‘supposed’ death scenes were supposed to be. Every time that trick is used it also makes the Ghostface in this movie feel less brutal than previous movies because he keeps not actually killing people. Like holy shit, Ghostface, you got the job done in all these other movies but what’s the matter, getting old? Things not working like they used to? Tara’s character is one of the worst cases of plot armor I’ve seen in a movie because there are multiple places that she should have died, but somehow she makes it.
Going with the kills, though, I will say that this entry has more than just an overused punchline problem. To give the film some credit I will say that the blood in this movie is fantastic. When the rocker-head creep Vince Schneider (Kyle Gallner) is stabbed through the neck while the classic song Red Right Hand is playing we get an excellent kill to really open this movie up (since Tara’s wasn’t an actual kill). Blood pours down his neck and, boy, do we get a great dark red ooze that coats him.
I do personally think that Vince wasn’t a very well thought out sub-character though. When they introduced him I thought that he was going to be the scapegoat character that acts suspicious the whole movie but gets slaughtered in the final act during the actual killer’s reveal. This, however, was not the case because his kill happens early enough to leave us thinking ‘well, what the hell was the point of that character?’
In between this kill and the next kill of this movie, we find out that Sam has a rocky past. She is the daughter of Billy Loomis, who actually appears and talks to her. This was actually an interesting twist in this film that didn’t feel overdone at all. In fact, I almost wish that the film had Billy Loomis directing her a little bit more than we had, however his return to the franchise in this form was interesting. I’m not saying I’m totally on board with it, as it seems like a little bit of a stretch, but having Skeet Ulrich back in a Scream film just feels right.
The next kill comes with a returning character from Scream 4, the now Sheriff Judy Hicks makes a welcoming return to the franchise. She is now the Sheriff of Woodsboro and has an 18 year old child, which leaves a lot of questions. In fact this is one of the plot holes in the movie, however this one wasn’t found by us. Basically, Scream 4 was 2011 and this movie was 2021, which means that Wes was 8 years old in Scream 4. Once again, we won’t take credit for finding this, so the original article that talks about this is linked here.
Back to the kill, though. Judy Hicks’ kill seems terribly rushed. Ghostface gives her a call as she is going to pick up food for herself and Wes. He threatens her, saying that he is going to kill her son. She calls all units to her house because its under attack, and then gets to her home, only to be slaughtered out on the front lawn in broad daylight. It’s that quick, and although we get a flashbang of a brutal kill, that’s all it is. After Judy Hicks is butchered, we get an almost back to back kill with our next victim, Wes Hicks. The scene leading up to his death was filled with a little too many fake out scenes. The whole scene felt a little like a filler scene just because of how many fake outs they decided to do. The music would amp up, Wes would open a door, it would be anticipated that the killer would be behind a door, and then he’d close the door and the music would stop. This formula was used so many times back to back in this scene which made his death welcomed with open arms. Some people say his death was intense, however I feel that this wasn’t a good enough death considering the massive build up that led to the actual death scene. Sure, the stab through the neck is cool and the moment of them staring at each other was intense, but that’s it? The whole scene feels underwritten and just thrown into the movie as a ‘time filler’ with no sustenance to it.
The next major death that contributes to this movies rating is the big one, the death of Dewey Riley. The scene starts with Dewey and the character of Sam Carpenter going in to save her younger sister, Tara, from being left alone on a hospital floor. The set up for this scene is weird because the reasoning for putting them on a seemingly abandoned floor was so she could feel safer, which is already strange logic. The scene right before Sam and Dewey come into the hospital shows Sam asking a deputy that we had seen at the hospital before, who was guarding her sister. The deputy stumbles around and claims he heard about the death of Judy Hicks and left. However, during the hospital scene we can clearly see a dead deputy on the ground who was left to guard Tara. One can logically assume that the deputy acting clueless would make no sense because he left another deputy there to guard Tara. It was just another scene in this movie that felt a little rushed and undercooked.
Because they left a deputy at the hospital with Tara, Sam has no reason to go and check on her. Tara not only should have died in the cold open of the film, but she should have died in the abandoned hospital scene. Tara is the literary definition of a character with plot armor. There is no good reason that Tara lives through the cold open, other than just to do something different in the franchise, and then there is also no good reason that Ghostface doesn’t successfully kill Tara in the hospital.
In the hospital scene, Ghostface is about to get Tara, until the elevator doors open up and we get Sam and Dewey. Dewey blasts and Ghostface runs into a room to hide. There is a bit of a scuffle and then they slam Ghostface into some cabinets. The gang runs down the hall and gets on the elevator to run to safety, right? Wrong, just before the elevator doors close Dewey holds it with his hands and tells the rest of the characters inside the elevator that ‘you have to shoot them in the head or they’ll come back’. He steps out of the elevator just in time for it to close and leave him on the floor alone with the unconscious Ghostface.
Just as he points his gun to Ghostface’s mask, a phone rings. Dewey looks down for a brief second which gives Ghostface the perfect opportunity to hop up and stab right into his stomach. Dewey’s death was unfortunate, because once again it the little ‘fake out’ they wrote it just feels like cheap writing. It also doesn’t help that the reason Dewey is at the hospital in the first place makes no sense, because of the ‘deputy plothole’, so his kill is already out of place. The kill as far as intensity, blood, and creativeness is actually one of the better kills in the movie. Slicing the knives up his stomach and back while we see that it was Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) calling him was pretty decent, especially since Ghostface is mentioning how it’s an honor to kill him. The scene by itself isn’t a horrible scene, and everybody knew they were going to kill a legacy character in this one, however the fact that the setup to the scene was so poorly written just makes this kill not as impactful for me personally.
The movie continues, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) comes back to Woodsboro after hearing about the death of Dewey, and talks to Sam. Sam is adamant on leaving Woodsboro with her boyfriend and Tarra, while Sidney is adamant on staying and fighting. They have a brief exchange before Sam gets up and leaves. Gale makes a comment to Sidney about how that didn’t go as planned, and Sidney says she put a tracker on Sam’s car. This makes no sense at all. Sidney didn’t even touch the car, and there is no way she would know which car is Sam’s in a hospital parking lot. Once again, it just feels like cheap writing to get Gale and Sidney at the final house. There are so many other believable excuses they could have given them as a reason for being at the house.
The next scene is the party. Tara’s friend group, now consisting of Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding), Liv McKenzie (Sonia Ammar), and Amber Freeman (Mikey Madison). There are a bunch of nameless extras there enjoying the party. Here we encounter another poorly written scene.
Chad Meeks-Martin and Liv McKenzie are making out on the couch. Liv states that she is ready to go to the ‘next level’ and askes Chad if he wants to go upstairs. Chad has a pretty good bit about not entirely knowing if Liv is or isn’t the killer and says he would rather stay downstairs where the party is at. Liv storms off and Chad’s sister Mindy gives him the thumbs up for playing it safe. This is one of the better scenes in the movie when it comes to these characters. In fact, dialogue wise this scene is one of the best in the whole movie when it comes to the friend groups.
The scene that is poorly written comes when Chad goes outside to look for Liv. Ghostface attacks him and he gets away the first time, but just so he can get tackled and stabbed some more. The ‘death’ was a really cool scene, however, guess what the wonderful writers decided to do? Make Chad live. This ‘death’ scene isn’t really a death scene, it’s a fake out for literally no reason. There is no plot reason that Chad shouldn’t have died here because all he does is give a weak thumbs up at the end from the back of the ambulance. Tara was already protected by plot armor once, and gave us the death fake out once, using the same exact tricks multiple times throughout the movie is not going to surprise the audience at all. It adds another tally on the ‘Cheap Writing’ board for this movie.
Sam, Richie, and Tarra show up at Amber’s party to get Tara’s spare inhaler. Amber ends the party and goes upstairs to find the inhaler with Tara. In this downtime Mindy is watching the first Stab movie and is ironically telling the character on screen to look behind them while Ghostface is standing behind her. She looks behind her and gets stabbed. Sam runs in and Ghostface runs out of the room while Sam tends to Mindy. This is the only fake out death in the movie that is reasonable, just because Ghostface didn’t go crazy on her like he did with the other two. This makes sense for her to come back in the end as being okay just because it makes sense. That stab wound she has shouldn’t kill her. She is fine
Everyone gets to the living room and begins freaking out. Liv is accused of being the killer and kind of has a panic attack, however Amber calms her down and whips out a gun, shooting Liv and confessing to being the killer. This wasn’t a surprise to me at all as Amber’s character was just annoyingly obvious. I knew she was the killer as soon as the schoolyard scene played out in the beginning. Her dialogue is awful, and that’s saying something because everyone’s dialogue in the schoolyard is absolute garbage. It sounds like just stereotypical teen chatter and nothing is interesting. Amber’s dialogue is just extra awful and drew too much attention to her for no discernable reason, which is why I picked her as the killer.
Later in this scene we find out that Richie is the other killer. Some people say this was obvious, and I only knew this literally moments before he revealed it when he was limping down the stairs, but for most of the movie I actually didn’t believe it was him. Coming from Modesto and seeming oblivious to the whole ‘Stab’ franchise made me doubt that it was him, which I guess was an easy cover up. I knew the killer was Amber and their interaction in the hospital after Sam was attacked made me totally not think that Richie was in kahoots with her at all.
Amber death is just as wild. In a fight Gale and Sidney smash a giant glass jug of hand sanitizer over Amber. Gale then gets a gun and Sidney lights a stove up, blasting Amber into the gas lit stove, which engulfs her whole body into flames. It’s a pretty wild scene, which makes it even more crazy once Amber comes running back into the room after Richie dies. She looks like a zombie and is immediately shot dead.
This movie was riddled with plot holes and poor writing. With the kills being so far apart, and faking us out with two of the actually decent kills, the film won’t be getting any added bonuses for kills. I do feel that you can get away with little bits of poor writing and plot holes if you can make up for it with your practical effects and interesting skills. This movie didn’t have either. I’ll give it half a point extra for the sole purpose that Dewey’s death was actually a good kill scene, however it’s only half a point because the story leading up to it makes no sense. All in all Scream (2022) was a memorable and modern take on the franchise. It was good to see some of the old characters back, and great to hear Rodger Jackson’s voice terrorizing Woodsboro’s youth once again. I’m going to give this movie a 5.5/10. I’m doing this because it was insanely enjoyable to see a Scream movie with Skeet in it again, and I do enjoy Ghostface’s phone call scenes, however the rest of the movie is not the best. A lot of it feels forced, rushed, and underdone with scenes feeling like the sole purpose that they are there being to fill up time.
With the announcement that the studio has greenlit another entry into this franchise so soon after this one I have to wonder, is it going to be better? Although I can’t wait for Ghostface to be up to his old tricks again, I do worry that it’s just a cash grab from the studio and will be even more rushed than this one was.