SCREAM

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

Following the slasher movie about slasher movies, the sequel about sequels, the third part of a trilogy about third parts of trilogies and the here-we-go-again reunion about here-we-go-again reunions, we now have the requel about requels. Yes, that's a new term (to me, at least): a part-reboot, part-sequel whose insistence on not really being Scream 5, even though that's clearly what it is, extends to its title. (Following Scre4m, what was wrong with 5cream? And if there's another one, what are they going to call that because Scream 2 has already been taken?). 

We're back in Woodsboro, of course, because the requel demands that you keep moving forward while simultaneously going back to the beginning. Ten years on and a new Ghostface is launching a new series of attacks, with the aim of manoeuvring all the key players back into position: Dewey (David Arquette), now the ex-sheriff and the town drunk, Gale (Courteney Cox), now a breakfast TV anchor, and Sidney (Neve Campbell), now with kids of her own. Why? What does it have to do with the Stab movies (the in-universe equivalent of the Scream movies) which have now reached Part 8, an instalment which has generated such hostile online fan fury? Also back are Randy's sister from Scream 3 (Heather Matarazzo), also now with her own teenagers and the now promoted deputy Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton), again with a teenage son of her own. (Small wonder that the first Favourite Scary Movie cited is The Babadook, an "elevated horror" film about motherhood.)

The Scream movies have always functioned as their own director commentaries and sometimes they've been winking at the audience so much it's a wonder they can walk in a straight line, but that's always been their USP and part of their charm: unlike the casts of unironic non-metaslashers whose characters had never seen a horror movie in their lives and thus blundered idiotically into death scenes, the Screams had characters who knew and intimately understood the finest points of slasher iconography, and still blundered idiotically into death scenes. Knowing the rules may get you a wry chuckle from the gorehound community, but breaking those rules (Stab 5 involved time travel, Stab 8 gave its Ghostface character a flamethrower) gets you foaming rage and derision from This Movie Sucks!!! YouTubers of the wacko "this movie raped my childhood" end of the splatter fan spectrum.

As a standalone slasher movie it doesn't work because there's so much callback to the previous films that you need to do the homework first: if I hadn't marathonned the first four Screams the previous day I wouldn't have had a clue who half these people were. (This is the second batch of revision I've had to do recently, after binging the first three Matrix movies as prep for Resurrections.) But as a Scream movie, as a Scream 5 it's good nasty fun and bloody enough to earn its 18 certificate, the motive does make sense in terms of current movie trends and hashtag issues, even if (as usual) the plot demands all the characters obligingly behave exactly as they're supposed to and exactly as they have to for the thing to work. It's also faintly absurd that people would sit around watching dramatised reconstructions of attempted murders of their own family in the same house (and on the same sofa!) where those original events took place, but it does provide a neat mirrors-within-mirrors gag. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's not scary, though it is jumpy and full of shock stinger moments. Plus it's a twisty whodunnit as well (which I typically failed to solve correctly).

It's actually directed by the Ready Or Not duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, but it feels very much in the late Wes Craven's mould. The other principal newcomer is Brian Tyler, replacing Craven's regular composer Marco Beltrami but again working very much in his style (having relistened to the score online, I honestly couldn't tell that much difference between them) so the film does play like a proper official Scream movie and not a Ten Years Later add-on by other, less talented hands, and I really enjoyed it. My one reservation: there are certain rules that one must abide by in a horror franchise, and the main one is that they invariably go on for at least two films more than strictly necessary. The Scream team would be advised to walk away now before Ghostface In Space or Ghostface Vs Jason.

****

TITANE

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS, AND THAT'S NOT A CAR-BASED PUN

As extreme French arthouse cinema that mixes body horror with psychological drama, serial killings, frank sexuality and absurd (and laughless) comedy goes, Titane is, probably mercifully, a one-off. I can't imagine a Titane 2, and I can't imagine the suits at Paramount or Platinum Dunes feverishly outbidding each other for the English language remake rights. I was ambivalent about Julia Ducournau's earlier horror/art Raw and, for all the graphic violence and sundry weirdness, I'm not won over by this new one either. Yet again everyone seems to love it far more than I do: is it just me?

Titane is either a rambling story that wanders all over the place with no clear idea where it's going, or (at least) three very strange stories jostling for space in the same film. When she was a child she was severely injured in a car smash and had to have a titanium plate embedded in her skull. Now Alexia (Agatha Rousselle, astonishing) is an exotic dancer at a car-themed nightclub who finds herself inexplicably pregnant after a sexual encounter with a Cadillac. Yes, really. She is also a serial killer who goes on the run and adopts the identity of a missing teenage boy named Adrien, shaving her head and binding her body and being taken in by the boy's distraught fire chief father...

Everyone else, including proper critics and international film festivals (including Cannes, where it got the Palme D'Or!) seems to have embraced Titane as a masterpiece but I just don't get it. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned and I'd just prefer a simpler, more coherent and straightforward narrative that focussed on just one of those strands; as it is the human/mechanical sex and pregnancy that mixes Demon Seed with Cronenberg's Crash, the odd comedy angles with the fire crew and the bloodstrewn serial killer nastiness never came together for me. Maybe that says more about me than it does about the film. But I can't apologise for not responding as enthusiastically as so many others whose recommendations I can usually trust. It is interesting and odd and sometimes shocking, certainly, but I just don't get it.

**

THE 355

CONTAINS SOME MINOR SPOILERS

There's actually nothing drastically wrong with The 355, the first major studio action release of 2022 which is pretty much as silly and implausible as we really need movies to be right now. In the current miserable climate we could use as much flashy and ridiculous nonsense as Universal, Warners at al can throw at us and Simon Kinberg's arbitrarily titled film (355 is briefly mentioned in dialogue in the last four minutes) certainly delivers on that score. It's a pity perhaps that the McGuffin at the centre of it is yet another electronic gizmo that allows the owner to break into every computer system on the planet - haven't we had this device in at least one Fast And Furious and Mission Impossible film yet?

The gimmick here is that it's an all-female crew with an international flavour. Top agents Jessica Chastain (USA), Diane Kruger (Germany) and Bingbing Fan (China), ex-MI5 techie Lupita Nyong'o (UK) and psychotherapist Penelope Cruz (Colombia) have to team up and gallivant around the world after the superchip and Chastain's of-course-he-wasn't-killed-in-the-opening-reel love interest gone rogue Sebastian Stan; Jason Flemyng pops up occasionally as the villain.

It is tosh and twaddle and incredibly undemanding, but it's perfectly well done and agreeably crunchy knockabout fun with a good rapport between the five heroes. It's certainly better than the first two Charlie's Angels movies (I actually liked its most recent incarnation) and maybe, if the audience is there, it might make it to a sequel (The 356?) or two. Not a classic but fun while it's on; if you don't think about it too much and if you don't take it too seriously you should have a decent enough time with it.

***