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

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

Recall with me, if you will, the scene in Hollywood December 2016. We were less than a year away from #MeToo, and the internet was keenly aware of Hollywood’s suffocating influence on women on and off screen but not yet sure what to do about it. Enter Morten Tyldum’s film Passengers , a movie which, despite featuring the two hottest stars in Hollywood at the apex of their fame, was mangled by internet critics immediately after take-off. A key piece of Passengers ’ plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who prematurely awakens from a century-long hibernation and faces a lifetime of solitude adrift in outer space; rather than suffer through a life of loneliness, he eventually decides to deliberately awaken another passenger, Aurora Lane, condemning her to his same fate. So this is obviously a film with a moral dilemma at its center. Morten Tyldum, director of...

REVIEW: Mufasa - The Lion King

To get to the point, Disney's new origin story for The Lion King 's Mufasa fails at the ultimate directive of all prequels. By the end of the adventure, you don't actually feel like you know these guys any better. Such has been the curse for nearly Disney's live-action spin-offs/remakes of the 2010s on. Disney supposes it's enough to learn more facts or anecdotes about your favorite characters, but the interview has always been more intricate than all that. There is no catharsis nor identification for the audience during Mufasa's culminating moment of uniting the animals of The Pridelands because the momentum pushing us here has been carried by cliche, not archetype. Director Barry Jenkins' not-so-secret weapon has always been his ability to derive pathos from lyrical imagery, and he does great things with the African landscape without stepping into literal fantasy. This is much more aesthetically interestin...

Professor's Picks: 10 Disappearing Movies Still on My Watchlist

Let me introduce this piece by discussing one of my favorite movies, 1938's Le Quai des Brumes , "Port of Shadows." This ancestor to noir film sees a despondent military deserter drifting to the foggy banks of Le Havre. There, he comes across a 17-year-old runaway pursued by several malicious parties. Their chance meeting teases a new and brighter future for these two drifters, forcing even the most nihilistic of us to consider the meaning of love and purpose in a meaningless world. I saw the film for the first time for Media Arts History I, and I was absolutely transported. In a semester that offered some of the most dry, challenging films I had to watch for any class, this film was just a breath of fresh air. E verything you imagine when you think of a "French movie," even if you only know them by pop culture parodies, this was all of that. The moodiness, the melodrama, the romance, it's all there, and to such great eff...

REVIEW: Don't Look Up

The premise of Netflix's new film, "Don't Look Up," is simple: two scientists discover a giant comet that is absolutely going to collide into earth, and the people of the world need to be warned. Telling people that the world is going to end is the easy part. The hard part is getting them to take it seriously. The media circus surrounding the end of the world is made only more hilarious seen through the eyes of our main characters: soft-spoken Professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo Dicaprio) and slightly disaffected grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence). It says a lot about the writing of this movie that even with the apocalypse just on the horizon, our protagonists with their complex inner lives keep us anchored in the conflict, never distracting us from it. But despite the writing and performances, t he film still can't escape the flaw inherent in its design. While most of the film's targets (politicians, clickbait editorials, ...

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...

REVIEW: Jurassic World - Rebirth

I had a mixed reaction to Jurassic World: Rebirth, but it did make for one of the most enjoyable theater experiences I've had in recent memory. I have to imagine that a part of this is because my most common theater appointments are matinee screenings, but I had the opportunity to see this one at a fairly well-attended midnight screening. And there's nary a film more tailored for surround-sound roaring and screens wide enough to contain these de-extinct creatures. ("Objects on the screen feel closer than they appear.") It was natural for me to cap the experience by applauding as the credits stared to roll, even if, as usual, I was the only one in the auditorium to do so. Yes, I am that kind of moviegoer; yes, I enjoyed the experience that much, and I imagine I will revisit it across time. That's not to imagine the movie is beyond reproach, but I suppose it bears mentioning that, generally , this i...

"When Did Disney Get So Woke?!" pt. 1 The Disney of Your Childhood

So, I’m going to put out a somewhat controversial idea here today: The Walt Disney Company has had a tremendous amount of influence in the pop culture landscape, both in recent times and across film history. Further controversy: a lot of people really resent Disney for this. I’ve spent a greater part of this blog’s lifetime tracking this kind of thing. I have only a dozen or so pieces deconstructing the mechanics of these arguments and exposing how baseless these claims tend to be. This sort of thing is never that far from my mind. But my general thoughts on the stigmatization of the Disney fandom have taken a very specific turn in recent times against recent headlines. The Walt Disney Company has had some rather embarrassing box office flops in the last two or three years, and a lot of voices have been eager to link Disney’s recent financial woes to certain choices. Specifically, this idea that Disney has all the sudden “gone woke.” Now,...

My Criminal Father Surrogate: Masculinity in A Perfect World

I've been wanting to tackle the subject of "masculinity" in film for quite some time now, but I hadn't quite known how best to do that. There's a certain buzzword, "toxic masculinity," that especially elicits a lot of strong feelings from a lot of different angles. While a post-#MeToo world has exposed some very disturbing truths about the way masculinity has historically performed, I'm not here to roast 50% of the world population. Actually, I really want to talk about a man's capacity for good. Ted Lasso (2020) There’s certainly a lot of discussion to be had for newer media celebrating men for possessing attributes not historically coded as "manly." But what's even more fascinating to me are the attempts to bridge the gap between traditional masculinity and new age expectations--to reframe an older vision of manhood within our modern context. Which brings me to Clint Eastwood’s 1993 film, A Perfect World. ...

The Earthling: Some Observations on "Natural Masculinity"

I’ve talked quite a bit about “toxic masculinity” across his blog, but I want to talk for a moment about a companion subject–“natural masculinity.” I’ve heard several other names and labels assigned to the idea, but the general concept is this idea that men are disposed to behave a certain way and that sOciETy forces them to subjugate this part of themselves. Maybe some of us were raised by someone, or currently live with someone, who buys into these attitudes. Maybe they’re perfectly fine most of the time, but once they meet up with Brian from sophomore year and go out into the mountains for a “weekend with the guys,” a sort of metamorphosis takes place. Jokes that were unacceptable to them become hilarious. Certain transgressions lose their penalty. Gentle Joe kinda mutates into a jerk. This is all propelled and reinforced by the idea that this is how men just are , and that entitles them to certain actions. And who are these women to infringe upon that God-given right? Gladiator (2...

REVIEW: The Electric State

It's out with the 80s and into the 90s for Stranger Things alum Millie Bobby Brown. In a post-apocalyptic 1990s, Michelle is wilting under the neglectful care of her foster father while brooding over the death of her family, including her genius younger brother. It almost seems like magic when a robotic representation of her brother's favorite cartoon character shows up at her door claiming to be an avatar for her long-lost brother. Her adventure to find him will take her deep into the quarantine zone for the defeated robots and see her teaming up with an ex-soldier and a slew of discarded machines. What starts as a journey to bring her family back ends up taking her to the heart of the conflict that tore her world apart to begin with. This is a very busy movie, and not necessarily for the wrong reasons. This just a movie that wants to impart a lot. There is, for example, heavy discussion on using robots as a stand-in fo...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog