Scream (2022)

"Oh my god, he's making a requel.”

Yes, Mindy Meeks-Martin, they did make a requel! Not exactly a remake. Not exactly a sequel. A Requel.

Officially just titled “Scream” like the original, Scream 5 works as a “passing of the franchise torch” from the Legacy Characters (Sidney, Gale, and Dewey) to a new generation of characters.

The movie begins with, of course, a phone call—the receiver of the phone call, Tara Carpenter. As Ghostface threatens her best friend Amber, he appears in her house and gets all familiar with his knife…

…but Tara, unlikely all of the other opening scene girls, survives.

The attack brings home Tara’s older sister, Samantha or Sam for short, along with her boyfriend Richie. We then met Tara’s friend group of Mindy and Chad (fraternal twins) who are the niece and nephew of Randy Meeks, Chad’s girlfriend Liv, Wes Hicks, son of the now Sheriff Judy Hicks from Scream 4, and the aforementioned best friend Amber.

When Sam discovers that her sister was attacked by Ghostface, she knows that her family secret is out. Sam is the daughter of Billy Loomis, the original Woodsboro Killer. It would seem that Billy slept with Sam and Tara’s mother and got her pregnant. Their mother got with, I assume, Tara’s dad and convinced him that Sam was his child. One day, Sam discovers the truth while going through her mother’s old diaries. She confronted her mother about this unknowingly in front of their father, leading to him leaving the family. Sam bears the guilt of this and when she tells this story to Tara as a likely explanation as to why this is happening, Tara is angry but forgives quickly.

Sam turns to former Sheriff Dewey for help with the Ghostface problem. He eventually agrees to help. He then texts Gale and calls Sidney, who is now married to Mark, the detective from Scream 3. Dewey joins Sam, Richie, and the rest at the home of Mindy and Chad, where, in Randy fashion realizes the killer is making a requel and shares the “rules of a requel.”

[Listen, I know it’s a newer movie and normally I wouldn’t spoil it, but with Scream 6 being released and soon reviewed, the ending kinda has to be given away. Consider this break your spoiler alert!]

The story plays out as a Scream movie does, with the killer being influenced by the in-movie franchise Stab. The killers turn out to be Amber and Richie, who met on the internet, upset at how Stab 8 seemingly spit in the face of their beloved franchise so they set out to create a real-life Ghostface story so it would reset the franchise in the right direction. Sam and Tara, along with Sidney and Gale end the threat by killing both Amber and Richie, but not without losing Liv, Wes, Sheriff Hicks, and Dewey, who after being stabbed and surviving so many times, finally meets his match in Scream 5.

This was the hardest to score out of all five movies, but I ended up giving this a 9, losing a point for the ending. I almost took a point away because of the characters because of another useless significant other, Liv, who only serves no point but to be a red herring. In Scream 1, Billy was the killer. In 2, Derek was again thought to be the killer, but he at least was an active character adding more to the plot. There wasn’t a significant other in 3 and in 4, you had Trevor, who was a useless ex-boyfriend.

Regardless, Liv was basically pointless. Since was the only true character sin, I didn’t remove a point. All the other characters play out in much the way one would expect from a requel where they are newer versions of their Part 1 counterparts.

As for the point I take away from the ending, The climax takes place at Amber’s house, the former home of Stu Macher, where the climax of the first movie takes place. Richie got Tara and Sam to the house by stealing Tara’s inhaler, knowing that she had an extra one at Amber’s. When they were leaving town, Tara insisted that they needed to get the inhaler before they left. Richie actually suggested that Tara didn’t need it. What would he have done if they agreed with him? It just felt like a cheap way to get the Protags to the Macher house.

Also, you’d think that house would be infamous by this time. How would Sam and Tara, especially Tara NOT know that was a house connected to the original killing of which someone was after them trying to copy? These are two questions that greatly impact the plot and since the movie doesn’t have answers, I take a point. So 9 it is.