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.

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