What is up SCREAM TEAM, Zack Cherry here, and this video is going to be my review for Scream (2022).
My spoiler-free review, I should clarify. I won't be going over any plot or character
points. I won't even be intimating towards them. I will be doing a spoiler review probably next
week, because there are a lot of things that I want to delve into, but in terms of this video, you're
safe if you haven't seen the movie. Without really beating around the bush here, I'm gonna say that
I really enjoyed this movie. I thought this was a great movie. My biggest takeaway leaving the movie
is that I immediately wanted to go back and watch it again. And of course I didn't... I haven't yet. I'm
probably gonna go see it again tomorrow, and several more times, I'm sure. But you know, that
wasn't really the case with other, maybe more so recent horror movies. Not to throw anything
under the bus, but I'll just say it. Halloween Kills. That was a very exhausting experience,
and when I left that theater, I was ready to not watch that movie again for a while. So with Scream
(2022), I was ready to jump right in again. And just while we're talking about the Halloween franchise,
because you know just the the idea of reboots is such a huge part of this movie, that this
doesn't feel like it's competing with itself. It doesn't feel like it's competing with the
first four movies that came before it, which is kind of how I felt about Halloween Kills
and Halloween 2018... Like the whole David Gordon Green thing, where it was just like "Well we ruined
this franchise, so now we need to redo it" and this movie doesn't do that. It's neither
competing with the movies that came before it, nor is it negating them. It's honoring them
and that's kind of a really beautiful thing, especially since you know the whole movie is a tribute to Wes Craven, so I really like it for that. There's no part in this movie that
feels repetitive from the things that came before it. They're not recreating
scenarios from the first Scream movie... because that's kind of what we've seen in
Scream 2, 3, and 4. And it just gives the movie this overall vibe of something that we've
never seen in this franchise before. And I'll let you decide if that's a good or bad thing. I
personally think that it's a wonderful thing, but this felt different because Radio Silence wasn't
copying Wes Craven, they were bringing their own unique style to the table, and they hit this one
out of the park. If you've seen Ready or Not, that was a fantastic movie, and this is just as good if
not better than that. I really liked the new cast, I felt that they were developed well. They felt like
real people, and there weren't really any one note characters. There might have been like one or two,
but you know they served their purpose for what they had to be, but nobody was really defined by
their relationship to other people, which I mean for example, like a character like Trevor
whose entire shtick was just his obsession with Jill. These characters actually have a sense of
agency about them, like everybody in this movie is kind of on guard and just thinking about "Who
should we be suspicious of?{ and that made everyone just seem a lot more accessible to me. Surprisingly,
I was actually more interested in the new cast than I was with the legacy characters,
and that's not to say that the legacy characters were done dirty, I felt that everybody
kind of received a good balance of screen time here. It didn't feel like, you know for instance in
Scream 4 where you had two groups of characters each kind of vying for a bigger piece of the pie,
only for nobody to really get any substantial quality screen time in the end. This movie
makes sure that everybody is taken care of. There are some notes I have in terms of character, but
I'll get more into those in my spoiler review when I do that because it does pertain to
Ghostface's motive, and I don't even want to touch upon any of that here. Despite the marketing for
this movie stating that it wasn't going to be meta at all, this is actually very meta. Maybe the most
meta of all the movies. But it hits in a different kind of way. This is a lot more self-reflexive, and
in that way it does what Scream 4 tried to do, but it did it more successfully in my opinion. That movie
referenced a lot of the remake cliches, but in the end it ultimately became a full-blown cliche in
itself. Whereas this one kind of goes back to subverting your expectations, and that's kind
of where the surprises came in. There are a lot of twists and turns here, and I don't necessarily mean
in a sense of like who lives and who dies, or who turns out to be Ghostface, but more so just
in the way that the plot unfolds. And that's kind of gonna bring me to what I think that this film's
weakest aspect was... besides a few things that were kind of cringe-worthy, that I don't want
to discuss here, but I'll get into in my spoiler review... but the pacing of the movie was definitely
the film's weakest aspect. I don't know if that was necessarily avoidable since with the new cast
there was a lot of ground to cover, because we do spend a good amount of the time just meeting these
people, and discovering their history and things like that, that we don't really follow
the same pattern that we did in Screams 1 to 4. But while I can handle slow build-ups
and all that... like if it pays off later on... I think one thing that felt like it was missing here are
definable set pieces. For instance, if we're talking about the other movies,
that might be something like in Scream 2 where Sidney and Hallie are trapped in the back seat
of the police car and have to crawl out, or in Scream 4 when Ghostface calls Kirby
from inside Olivia's closet. Moments like that like, for every fan of the franchise whether you like
the movie that they're in or not, you like those moments. Those are franchise defining moments...
and there wasn't a lot of that in here. I can't even really think of anything that comes to mind.
So the question then becomes: Is this movie lacking in exciting and memorable moments, or
is it a situation where it's kind of greater than the sum of all of its parts?
I'm leaning towards the latter. I do think that as a whole this movie
is really excellent, and you kind of have to take it for everything from the start to the
finish. But that's kind of going to be the divide here, because if you're the type of Scream fan who
measures the worth of a Scream movie on things like: Did it have a really good opening
scene? or did it have a really good killer reveal? or like really good deaths? And not to say that
none of that is prevalent in this movie. because that's all like open to interpretation. But if you
base your opinion just on the bits and pieces of the movie rather than the movie
in its entirety, you might not like this one. Whereas, if you are looking for a
really good story to just unfold from start to finish, and just see where it takes its characters,
you probably really will. The thing is that the Scream movies mean so many different things
to different people, so what you might find value in in one movie, someone else might not.
Personally, I find value in all five of these movies, regardless of where i put them in rank.
I love each and every one of them, and I think one thing that I really respond to about these movies
is the murder mystery aspect. And in terms of Scream 2022, I'm happy to say that it really does
feel like it's going back to its roots, since this was such an integral part to the movie. And other
than Scream 2, this seems to be the only movie where the characters are actively participating in
a murder mystery, rather than just being unwitting passengers in a slasher. There's obviously going
to be a lot to dissect with this movie, and I'll give you more of that in my spoiler review.
But this is a movie that I'm not just gonna see twice in the theater. I'm for sure gonna
see it at least five times, and I really hope it does well. Just in terms of this being
financially successful, that will only just mean more Scream movies in the future, you know
what with whatever direction they're going, I hope that Radio Silence is still involved
because I like the fact that this franchise has been consistent up until this point, and I hope it
continues that way. So if you're big into Scream, and new to the channel, make sure to check out
some of my other related content here. Until next time, I've been Zack Cherry, and I'll be right back.