Scream 5, Scream 6 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Another late set of reviews but because of the new one I figured I could get away with it. I reviewed the first four in a previous post and this gets us current with the 2022 and 2023 releases.

I chose to separate them into two posts not for length but because they're different types of movies. Let me explain.

The first four are a contiguous set. They tie back into each other, the stories interweave, they're tight. The next two are the attempt to hand off the franchise to new characters. Notice that word "attempt". I won't say it's a bad thing to do because it can get really stale to have the same things happening with the same characters over and over and over, even if the ghostface killer(s) are never the same people with the same motivations. The victim group is what needs refreshing, especially once they've been thinned out.

Unfortunately this didn't work out well, in my opinion. I have nothing against the characters they created and the main one has a pretty interesting backstory. But it was missing the spark.

In the 5th movie they still had all three of the main characters from the beginning. The directors made a deliberate choice to kill one of them and do it as a perma-kill. This falls back to the "no one is safe" concept but it is still a divisive topic in the fandom today. I was even sad that it happened. I liked that character.

These movies start getting into overkill and sloppiness, which are kind of endemic for the time. The kills weren't just several stabs - they were dozens of stabs. That much stabbity-stabbity all but ensured that the prop knives were more obvious and the ability for people to linger and survive such things was kind of an eye roll time. The sloppiness came when they departed from canon.

They strayed from canon in a couple of ways. One - the ghostface killers didn't always have that direct personal connection to the people they killed. Two - the ghostface killer did things that they hadn't done unmasked in the past. Those may seem like small issues but when you're dealing with an established franchise with fervid fans and you're taking over from a beloved director you gotta walk a fine line. You want to make it yours, you want to pay credit to the original director/creator, and you want to make a good enough movie they let you make more.

Of course this isn't always true *cough cough Batman Forever cough* but in this case I think they did. There's a crapton of Easter Eggs in them that reference Wes Craven, enough that it's kind of overkill in my opinion. I think they would have been better off sticking closer to his core themes than putting in bird pictures on the set because he liked birds.

Again, I get it. Rebooting the franchise with new characters to take the lead and using the legacy ones for continuity and nostalgia. Plus using the legacy characters adds a patina of legitimacy to the newer movies. There were big boots to fill and this is one way to add some padding. Of course killing off one of the legacy characters may seem like it was the wrong thing to do but it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Back to the overkill and sloppiness thing. The kills were much gorier and I think part of that is changing opinions in movie rating boards. It's also part of the meta where the reboot has to be MORE. The sloppiness has to do with things like the ghostface killer getting whapped upside the face with a frying pan and shaking it off, etc. There was a lot of stuff where the violence level was upped but the effects were minimized. It's again a systemic thing but it also makes the restraint of the first four movies more obvious.

The new movie is out. It's why I made myself watch all of these in a short period of time. From the trailers and from what I've heard it seems like they're going to pretend these two movies never happened and go back to the original premises. The trailers promise more of the thriller aspect and I expect there to be some overkill because it's expected. I'll do a review on that one, of course.

As with the first movies I won't be watching these again. It's not that I don't think they're not good because they're still good enough to be entertaining and keep you wondering who the ghostface killers are and why they're doing it. It's for the same reason as the first - when you know the ending to movies like this you need a reason to watch them again. You know the ending so all the tension is gone.

Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Yeah. I shouldn't have to explicitly state that there's spoilers, given that the movies were released in 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2011. I did because I hadn't seen them until this week and neither had my friend who was over for the (short) marathon. I've said before that I'm woefully behind on my pop culture movie viewing.

This isn't going to be a standard review of each movie. I don't want to type that much and it's not what this particular post is about. This is about the franchise and an overall review.

Note that this is the first four movies of the franchise. That's important. These are the ones that are the franchise. There will be more of that in the next review. These, even with the long gap between 3 and 4, are a cohesive whole. They're also the ones directed by Wes Craven so that has a lot to do with it.

First and foremost I found these not just entertaining but good. I'm not even saying "good for a slasher movie". I'm saying good without qualifications.

The entire series builds on itself and draws you in with all kinds of continuing meta references. There's a movie within a movie (the in-movie "Stab" movies) and those really start getting meta when they're doing recursive references. That's a very interesting take on the whole concept of life vs movies, within a movie. It's confusing, it's a little head-tilt at times, and it works for these movies.

I watched the first three with a friend and we were both trying to figure out who the killer was, and then who the killers were once we figured out that it's two people doing the killing. Just like in the movies we would go back and forth on it. We had a pretty good average of getting it right eventually.

The concept of the ghostface killer being a role and not a person I believe was unique or very new when these started. In later movies it's referenced as meta, where there's not a singular killer to stitch the movies together. I think it was a good choice because it makes every movie a new thriller and mystery to be solved. They did tie together motives so there's continuity there beyond the three surviving characters.

One thing you need to get past, fast, is how characters who have been very well stabbed and slashed continue to function. They're also given rather minimal medical assistance about half the time. This has to be done to keep the action going. When the story calls for it the same wounds will disable one character but let a different one keep on truckin'. Once you can accept that and not keep saying "Oh come on!" to the screen you'll be happier.

Watching them as a marathon is darn amusing because Dewey's moustache gets fuller with each movie. That had to be a deliberate choice, given how it started. And it's darn amusing without being referenced in the movies in any way.

This set of movies is well constructed, well structured, has strong callbacks to previous ones without being held back, and has legacy characters that keep on going in each one. They all get injured, they all heal, they all come back again. It's pretty cool since at least two of them are or became pretty well known actors during this time.

It seems like doing opening cameos in the movies within movies became a thing because there's some big names involved. The first movie had Drew Barrymore on the poster when she was A Big Thing and then she was the first kill. This was done intentionally to show that no one is off limits and frees up the movies to bring in and then take out anyone they deem necessary, or amusing.

I chose these four to "review" together because this is the core of it and the new Scream 7 goes back to these roots. The ending of Scream 4 sets things up for what's going to be discussed in the next post about Scream 5 and Scream 6. Overall they didn't do a bad job on the setup and it didn't feel like they were throwing in the towel.

Good writing, good acting, and consistency are what I would say make these movies good for this long. Of course people will disagree because, well, they like to disagree. Let 'em. The movies specifically didn't do much with topical subjects so they don't feel dated. The technology is older but that makes it more fun to yell at the screen and then see the technology evolve over time as newer movies were made. Even then newer technology didn't solve problems. It was used to replace the technology that was used previously. Landlines to cell phones is a big one, even though landlines seem to be one of the consistent things in all of them.

I don't know that I would watch them again. Now that I know what's gone on and read the IMDB trivia there's no mystery or surprises. Even the jump scares won't hit as hard. That's the problem with mysteries and thrillers - once you know the ending there's not much to draw it into rewatching. Unless you get into the fandom, which is also addressed within the meta of these.

My one big beef is that ghostsface uses unlimited shiny stainless steel knives. First, the unlimited thing. Second, the stainless steel thing. Everyone rightly rags on movies where there's shootouts with unlimited ammo and the same holds for when a character has an unbelievable number of the same kind of knife. The shiny stainless steel is just me being annoyed because those crap knives don't hold an edge. But they shine on camera and that's more important here. I can still gripe to myself about it.