REVIEW: SCREAM 7

I've been trying hard to find to see if I can't find a way to talk around the Scream 7 situation with all its associated turmoil. On the one hand, congrats to Neve Campbell for holding her ground until Paramount recognized her contributions to the franchise. On the other hand, it's a shame they had to drown Melissa Barrera in order to welcome her back into the fold.

But these kinds of contradictions, they follow both the slasher genre as a whole as well as this franchise specifically. I definitely have mixed feelings about the delight that comes with watching this movie in the theater as the audience all winces in unison while Ghostface delivers a particular nasty cut to a young girl who certainly did not deserve to be vivisected this way. The franchise itself has mixed feelings about the fandom it engenders, punishing the mania that springs up in the wake of humans being hacked to death--while also very much depending on it. So it's perhaps not actually so heretical for me to admit that, yes, my feelings around this outing were delightfully mixed.

Thirty years after Ghostface marked her as his target, Sidney finds her oldest daughter, Tatum, approaching many of the same thresholds where she first faced off against her predator. Her worst fears are confirmed when Ghostface emerges once again. Only this time, he seems happy to pull off his mask and reveal exactly who it is threatening to destroy her family, and the person underneath may be even more terrifying than any mask she's ever faced.

Neve Campbell's great revelation back in 1996 was the ability to convey wisdom beyond her years. Thirty years on, she's fully inherited that depth of soul without having lost that vitality. Isabel May is key to giving this movie real stakes. She makes you forget how vapid and detestable slasher targets are supposed to be, and she holds her ground against a legend like Neve Campbell. I'd be okay to see her around more. I actually really enjoyed this new generation of teen characters and looked forward to seeing what they'd bring to the terrain, only to feel they had been underused by the film's climactic bloodbath. Joel McHale, he's no Patrick Dempsey, but I guess we'll keep him.

One of the problems with slasher franchises is that they've always carved out this problem for themselves of deifying murderers--even after they're dead. Scream 6 had a literal shrine to the saga's lineup of killers. The Scream saga has been carried by a strong cast of champions and survivors, and this has helped offset the worship around literal killers. Even so, the most important people in the franchise wind up being the people murdering kids. After their targets have been mutilated, the identities of the victims are basically erased, except insofar as they can be hailed as trophies for the killer.

This movie took a crucial step to returning some of the power to the victims. Mind you, I don't even know what the kill tally is across seven films, and some of the murders were definitely more distressing than others. But the movie dials into the emotions our survivor, Sidney, holds for her friend who was gruesomely killed all the way back in that first movie, Tatum, for whom her daughter is named. "She was the last friend I ever trusted," Sidney explains.

How interesting can you make a seventh movie? Turns out, there are still ways to make Ghostface mysterious. This movie finds a new way to tease out the intentions of Ghostface beyond just "who is the person wearing the mask." And it's partly for that reason why I can't give too much grace to voices who are content to write off this movie for being the sixth sequel to a 30-year-old franchise. I don't think that was ever the climb this movie faced.

The "face your past" tagline (which could have been applied to any of the last five Scream movies) winds up grilling Sidney for seeking out a happy ending. "I wanted to show that there was life after trauma." The film supposes this to be some kind of unresolved issue within her when really, she has every right to live her life. And frankly, that's the more interesting question at hand. Anyone under contract can survive the murderous designs of any given movie. But how do you depict the battlefield of real life?

And the movies already gave a more intelligent answer to that question back in 2022 when we saw that Sidney had an abundant life so far removed from her darkness that her family couldn't even be seen onscreen. Sidney herself would get to foray back into Ghostface's domain, yes, but that all happened on her terms when she chose to return to the battlefield to make the world safer for other would-be victims. Yet this film really puts Sidney on trial over electing not to help Sam and the others in the last Scream movie--when we all know exactly why we didn't see Sidney in New York back in 2023.

I wound up being validated for my foresight, yet nonetheless conflicted about whether it was fair to subject her and her family to this nightmare just to prove what most of had already suspected--and what was already much better articulated in the subtext two whole movies ago.

I say that this film makes Ghostface mysterious, and it does. (And give me credit, I actually correctly identified the person behind the mask.) But once that mask comes off, and they start monologuing, Ghostface's motives wind up sounding distinctly less compelling than they've ever been.

So, I suppose in a roundabout way ... this ratifies Sidney's final victory over her masked menace. Sidney herself is as fresh as ever while Ghostface ... just needs to move on. She has truly outlived him once and for all.

And maybe now that we've resolved this, we can decide that if Ghostface must be sated with more targets to pursue, he needs to find new territory in which to hunt. By all means, let's keep Sidney and Gale and the other survivors around (at whatever wages they deem appropriate) to help train the new kids. But despite what this film wants us to believe, Sidney has absolutely earned the right to her happy ending.

So ... someone should tell Paramount just to make nice with Melissa Barrera and bring her and Jenna Ortega back.

Then again, Paramount is busy doing some slaughtering of its own at the moment ...

--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...

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...

(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...

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...

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...

REVIEW: Supergirl

Some will say, "We don't need another edgy superhero!" But that's not what makes the utter mediocrity of DC's new Supergirl so devastating. People were saying "We don't need another X superhero" since 2012, and the post-Infinity saga stupor we've slogged through was not triggered by piling one-too-many superheroes onto the camel's back. The Flash sucked because its perversion of the butterfly effect theory was convoluted and ham-fisted. Black Adam sucked because nobody on that film knew what a moral dilemma actually looks like. "Love and Thunder" sucked because, despite what everyone thought in 2017, Waititi's style only barely worked in "Ragnarok" and was not going to work in a script which feels like it was farted out half-past midnight. Supergirl had none of those issues. The real tragedy of Supergirl is that it so easily could have worked. Drifting around the universe has mostly worked for Sup...

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...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog