REVIEW: Scream

Stop me if you've heard this before about slasher films, in or out of the Scream franchise:

"Don't overthink it. It's just a scary movie."

What an insulting thought for anyone who's ever found themselves in the throes of a gripping horror film. Good slasher films, like the original Scream, look honestly at the thing that scares us most and gives it a face. They know that the point of the slasher isn't in the chasing or the stabbing, but the unmasking. The overcoming of the thing that scares you. Good slasher films "overthink" it.

I'm grateful to report that the directors of the newest Scream film, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, not only understand this principle, they embrace it wholly. In doing so, they may have created a sequel that not only meets but surpasses the film it tries to emulate.

Twenty-five years after Sidney Prescott's first encounter with Ghostface, we meet Sam Carpenter, a native of Woodsboro who returns home after a terrible family secret is unearthed and her connection to the original Ghostface murders comes back to haunt her. Defeating this new iteration of Ghostface will mean confronting the past, both the demons of her own history and the heroes who've bested Ghostface before.

When I say this film "overthinks it," I'm mostly referring to characterization. It's a tender mercy, and a mark of how deeply this writing team loves the franchise, that this is arguably the most character-centric film of the series. This is true of both the old guard and the new kids in town. While our legacy cast mostly serves as a consulting board, only entering the fray when absolutely necessary, there is something moving about seeing a survivor like Sidney graduate into the protector of the new generation.

There are some traps inherent in both horror as a genre and a franchise that turns life-or-death into a game. The opening scene, for example, has Ghostface terrorizing his first victim with trivia about the film Scream film, little throwbacks that generational audiences are sure to relish even as this child's life is on the line. This girl's about to be stabbed multiple times, is now really the best time to cash in on the nostalgia? But when your franchise is dependent on that ...

At the same time, this new installment is more mindful of the necessity of empathy than we've seen in some of the franchise's more stale offerings. The movie graciously tames some of the teenage snark that clotted earlier installments. Not even as much as this reviewer might have preferred, but this film makes it easier to like this batch of characters, and feel genuine distress when they inevitably meet the blade of Ghostface, than we've seen from many previous iterations.

I won't be so dismissive as to say that this is the first legacy sequel to emerge unscathed, there have been some good ones, but if any future attempts at "requelling" find any success, they inevitably have this film to thank for setting a pattern. What could have been "just a scary movie" or "just another reboot" instead becomes a tribute to fandom itself.

Thanks for playing.

--The Professor

Comments

Toy Story 4: Pixar's Tribute to Regression

It was about this time last year that I came across the one person who actually hated Toy Story 3 . I was reading Jason Sperb’s book “Flickers of Film: Nostalgia in the Age of Digital Cinema” as part of my research for my essay on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Pokemon: Detective Pikachu . It was in one of his chapters on the Pixar phenomenon that he shared his observation from the ending of Toy Story 3 , essentially casting the film as this nostalgia mousetrap for adults: “ If Andy lets go of his childhood nostalgia and moves on, then Toy Story fans don’t really have to , as the narrative recognition in the potential value in such an act is sufficient. Actually moving on becomes indefinitely deferred in an endless cycle of consumption (rewatching the movies, purchasing new versions of the movie, purchasing more and more Toy Story-related merchandise, rewatching them yet again with the next generat...

(Almost) A Love Letter to the "Percy Jackson" Movies

Maybe it's just living through a pandemic-stained world rife where each election feels like a last-ditch effort to rescue liberty from the oblivion, but I'm sometimes nostalgic for the days when the most traumatic thing in my life was a poor adaptation of a favorite book. My generation will remember the film adaptation of the popular YA fantasy book Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan with something like embarrassment, if not outright lividity. The book follows a young teen, Percy Jackson, who discovers that the gods of ancient Greece not only exist, but also sire modern day heroes. As a child of one of these gods, Percy is continually drawn into their Olympian-sized conflicts wherein he gets to prove himself every bit as much a hero as Hercules. Each installment of the five-book series reads like a theme-park ride through Greek mythology as the teens travel across the country battling ancient m...

REVIEW: Disclosure Day

Maybe it was self-control that compelled Spielberg to build his whole movie around aliens but give the aliens themselves as little screentime as possible. (Or, for all I know, he did it on a dare.) But this is only one of the risks taken by his latest film. This first encounter picture is distanced from something like Independence Day and more toward something like 2001: A Space Odyssey --and it's even closer to something like Arrival . The film sees a cyber-security worker, Daniel Kilner (Josh O'Connor) who defects with the intent to reveal what he knows to the world: the government has had repeated, secret encounters with extraterrestrial life. He has a team of underground sympathizers, lead by Hugo Wakefield (Colmon Domingo), but he also has agent Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) out to stop the truth at any cost. Kilner's only chance getting the truth out there is in joining up with Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a newscast personali...

REVIEW: Project Hail Mary

The elements in Project Hail Mary are all mostly straightforward and build to a fairly familiar end: drop an average Joe into an extraordinary situation where he is required to be extraordinary also, and watch extraordinary things happen. This is proven territory. And I spent most of the time drafting this review trying to decide whether that was a point for or against the film, helmed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller--and whether that made a difference for a non-franchise piece like this, the exact kind of film we need to succeed at the box office in order to have a healthy landscape. I think the answer to that question is honestly bigger than any one film, even a reasonably well-done one such as this. But I will say that a movie like Project Hail Mary gives me some hope, and it's my wish that the film continues to find people who will receive it with zeal. And I hope that the people who do will continue to search for other films that they...

Some Much Needed Love for Megamind

Following this year's Oscars ceremony, filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, directors of The Lego Movie , penned an op-ed for Variety bemoaning the stigma around animated films. They report taking issue with Naomi Scott, one of the presenters for best animated film, saying that animated films are some of the most formative experiences a kid has, and that kids tend to watch these films over and over, further noting "I think some of the parents out there know exactly what I'm talking about." Lord and Miller seemed to take this as implying that adults can't appreciate animated films, saying "Surely no one set out to diminish animated films, but it’s high time we set out to elevate them." I didn't personally find Scott's observation that kids make their parents watch the same animated films over and over again innately demeaning--certainly not any more than Schumer joking that her toddler made he...

REVIEW: Song Sung Blue

I came into Craig Brewer's Song Sung Blue with little context for the real-life couple at the center of this movie, for Neil Diamond, or for the world of celebrity impersonators interpreters. There are no doubt subterranean connotations to the specific songs that they chose to sing at certain moments in the narrative that are lost on me. I have no doubt, though, that the intended audience will find this movie before long. But the film was still viable enough that even a relative neophyte like me could still find himself humming along to this musical drama. The film documents the real-life couple of Mike and Claire Sardina, celebrity impersonators who fall in love, marry, and form a tribute band for legendary singer, Neil Diamond. We track their relationship from its beginning through their career aspirations and the crossroads in their marriage, including a violent accident that changes their family forever. Again, I don...

REVIEW: HOPPERS

In the 1950s under the threat of nuclear warfare, Hollywood premiered such exercises as The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds where an alien power would pass judgment on humankind, holding its fate in its hands. Here in the 2020s under the shadow of such threats as climate change, Hollywood sends to be our judge ... beavers. Let me back up ... Daniel Chong's new film from Pixar Animation, Hoppers , sees Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student whose self-appointed mission is to preserve the glade where she used to find sanctuary with her now deceased grandmother. Her biggest opponent is hometown boy and beloved mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has designs to plow over the glade in order to open his new freeway--estimated to save travelers four whole minutes of commuting. Mabel gets her golden opportunity when she uncovers secret technology pioneered by her professor which allows a human to rem...

The Notebook Has No Excuses

The thing about film is … the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. Film tells us, even in a society obsessed with wealth and gain, “Remember, George, no man is a failure who has friends.” Film warns us that the most unnatural evil lies in wait at the Overlook Hotel and peeks out when all the guests leave for the winter–and that the heart of it resides in room 237–knowing we'll trip over ourselves wanting to open that door. Film is what makes us believe that the vessel for the deepest human emotion could be contained in a cartoon clownfish taking his unhatched cartoon son and holding him in his cartoon fin and telling him he will never let anything happen to him. Nights of Cabiria (1957) Even when it tries to plant its feet aggressively in realism, film winds up being an inherently emotional realm. We feel safer to view and express all manners of passions or desires here in the space where the rules of propriety just don’t matter anymore. So a fa...

REVIEW: Soul

Pixar's latest film, Soul , dropped on Disney+ Christmas day, another regrettable casualty of the virus. This time around, we follow a hopeful musician bursting with enthusiasm. Music is an oddly appropriate metaphor for the film: both certainly touch the outer rim of mankind's emotional faculty, but good luck summarizing the experience to your friends. Joe Gardner is a music teacher at a public school whose enthusiasm for music is spilling out of the walls of his classroom. Opportunity strikes Joe the same day that misfortune does, and a fatal accident lands him in a celestial plane of existence known as "The Great Before," where souls are developed and finessed before being sent to earth to experience human existence. Joe is saddled with mentoring 22, a soul sapling who has settled in The Great Before for several hundred years and has no intention of ever giving mortality a chance. But in 22, Joe sees a chance to return back to earth and fulfill his purpose if he ca...

Charade: The Shortest Distance Between Two Words

It can feel hackneyed, and even a little lazy, to echo that oft-repeated sentiment that “they really just don’t make ‘em like they used to.” That kind of nostalgic wallowing has us forget that, yeah, even the old masters sometimes produced real stinkers. And it’s also not fair to the many storytellers today who, working against ever turbulent conditions, still manage to create something deeply profound and worthy of the deepest reverences … But there are absolutely times where it’s really easy to believe this anyways. Let me explain by describing my recent experience watching Argylle for the first time earlier this year. The film was designed as a spin-off from the “Kingsmen” franchise and saw poor Bryce Dallas Howard playing Elly, a reclusive spy novelist, whose life is turned upside down when a host of malicious agents converge on her demanding that she write her final book because the events in her novels have predicted real w...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog