Film Review: “Scream” (2022)

This is how you revive a franchise.

There is no denying the impact that the “Scream” franchise has had on the horror genre. While horror audiences are never in short supply, the genre has been a perpetual victim of it’s own conventions. Even to this day, in a post-”Scream” setting, films such as “Halloween Kills” and “Spiral: The Book of Saw” have often contributed to the staleness of the genre by being generic and by-the-numbers. The “Scream” movies have often mocked clichés such as “I’ll be right back” and “Let’s Split Up” and with the franchise’s excellent cast (Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette) and the iconic Wes Craven at the helm, adding freshness to the genre.

Spanning over 25 years, “Scream” has remained one of Craven’s most iconic and successful franchises. All four films have worked at being both meta and effectively scary. Talks of a fifth film circulated after the release of “Scream 4” in 2011 but, then in 2015, Wes Craven passed away. Shortly afterwards, MTV brought “Scream” back to the small screen with an incredibly forgettable series that ended in 2019. However, after the MTV series ended unceremoniously on VH1, rumors on “Scream 5” resurfaced. This time, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett were attached to the film after the massive success that was the 2019 film “Ready or Not”.