Scream 5

Review

Scream 5 ended up being just as good as it’s title predicted, a 5/10. I understand why people like this movie, however, for me this was just a little hard to sit through. I definitely think it has more to do with personal taste than the quality of the movie because some parts of this movie were so fucking cool so it just sucks that I didn’t really vibe well with the rest of the movie.

This may shock you but this is the story of ANOTHER string of murders committed by Ghostface in the lovely town of Woodsboro, California, why anyone still lives there? I couldn’t tell you. This movie follows a new cast of characters headed by sisters Jenna Ortega and Sam. Throughout the movie we find out that Sam’s father is actually Billy Loomis and that someone is coming after her and the people around her in a sick obsession with her past. Sid and Gale end up coming back to town after Dewey informs them about what’s going on and they attempt to solve the mystery and protect these new victims. The movie ends with a third act happening in Stu Macher’s house as the killers get revealed and are eventually killed by Sid, Gale and Sam.

This movie focuses mostly on a new cast of characters. I don’t mind the legacy characters being a bit sidelined but it becomes really frustrating when you take into account that I didn’t really like a lot of the new characters and I still thought that Sid, Gale, and Dewey slayed. Personally out of the new characters, I only really liked Wes and Jenna Ortega while for the rest I felt something between indifference and outright distaste, which really sucked for me considering two of the characters are Randy’s niece and nephew and I didn’t care about them either. I didn’t ever really end up liking Sam which very much colored my experience watching the movie considering she is the main character. She just said stupid shit every once and a while so whenever I could feel myself warming up to her she would ruin it by saying or doing the dumbest fucking thing possible. While we’re on the topic, I HATED the way that Billy looked in this movie. I’ve heard people say that he looks great and maybe it’s because I watched the original so recently to this movie but he just looked so weird. It was very uncanny valley for me. It lowkey looked like it was a video game avatar version of Billy Loomis, which is something I’ve said before in regards to human cgi, I just don’t think that technology is able to replicate humans well enough for me not to be bothered by it.

Probably my biggest issue with this film is the screenwriting. I could definitely tell that this was not written by Kevin Williamson and the script just did not live up to his standards at all. The snappy one-liners were back and we all know how I feel about fucking snappy one-liners. Another general pet peeve of mine is when movies bring up stuff like fandom spaces, like it just irks me to my core. When this movie said the word ‘fanfiction’ I think I almost vibrated out of my skin in like pure rage. Like it really irks me especially when fandom specific terms are used, it feels like a containment breach and when it’s on such a large level it almost invites unwanted people into those spaces where they end up judging the culture which they usually aren’t a part of and it just ends up being a whole mess. This is also the movie where I really started to notice how fucking often the question, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” is brought up. Like in the first few movies it’s said once or twice but in five basically every victim answers the titular question and it just gets so fucking overdone by even the halfway point in this movie.

I also think this movie thought it was a lot funnier and a lot scarier than it was. There were a ton of moments where there was like a pause for laughter or like scary music cues and I just didn’t feel like I was getting into it necessarily, like the whole section with Wes walking around the house thought it was so scary but it really wasn’t considering it was the same overdone horror beat over and over again, not to mention the fact that it ended up being so anticlimactic when he just fucking turns around and Ghostface is there, like hello? And to add onto the funny part, a lot of the jokes in this film have been done before and so they didn’t end up being that funny. Much of humor these days is funny because the punchline subverts your expectations so when Ghostface asks his basically trademarked question and someone responds saying they don’t actually like horror movies but instead only watch musicals it’s funny in theory. HOWEVER, in practice, it’s not original. I’m sure that from the moment the first movie was released there were movie commentators shitting on it making the joke “Well what if someone only watches musicals what then?? hahaha” like this idea isn’t super revolutionary. On top of that a lot of the delivery of jokes in this movie just falls a little flat for me. For example, with the musical joke it’s delivered so seriously that it sucks all the air out of it and while yes it wouldn’t be in character for this moment to be delivered differently, it doesn’t land this way so it shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The rest of the humor typically come from those snappy, absolutely hilarious one-liners but I’ve already said my piece on that so I’ll shut up now, but you get the point.

Oh and one last thing, this movie really has an issue with logistics, like how did Ghostface get into this hospital wearing a robe and a mask and carrying a knife, other than that one police guard where are the hospital staff? Like throughout this movie Ghostface ends up in really specific spot and not to sit and nitpick but like the second you give the question of how he got there more than one second of thought the whole thing falls apart within a second. For me, part of what makes the original so great is the logicality of everything. When you look back on every kill, everything makes sense, when Ghostface moves he walks instead of the teleporting this Ghostface seems to do. With a killer like Freddy shit like teleportation can work but with Ghostface, who is one of the few slashers who is profoundly human? It just doesn’t work and it ends up looking a little crazy.

Now this isn’t to say that the whole movie was bad. I really loved Dewey’s kill. Man has been surviving quite literally any and every very fatal attempt on his life and if he finally had to run out of lives I’m glad it was on this one. His death was sad, it was gross, and above all else it was a damn good way to go out. The shot after he died was so fucking cool like it just looked so sick and it allowed for a moment of silence after Dewey’s death which I really appreciated considering he is one of the 3 legacy characters we have left and he’s been with us since the beginning.

I also enjoyed the ending once Amber was revealed to be the killer. This time the reveal wasn’t all that surprising but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. However I did have an issue with Amber and Richie being in a relationship because Richie is presumably about 22-23 and Amber is still in high school, even if she’s a senior who’s 18 that’s still really gross and feels predatory to me. Other than that the ending was delightfully psychotic and I thought that the fire stunt for Amber was super cool.

Overall I liked this movie a lot more than I made it seem like but I definitely had a good amount of issues with the movie. I didn’t really care for this movie’s commentary on toxicity within fandom spaces and I don’t really think this movie added much commentary on ‘requels’ for me to enjoy it from that angle either. I think it overall looked cool and was a fun movie but at least for me, the deeper I looked the more I found fault.