Wes Craven's '90s cult horror film "Scream" (1996) was a groundbreaking flick that set numerous trends for the future of the horror genre. It was charming, well-acted and coherent, so it was also simply well-written. The first two sequels were good sequels that were fun, managed to keep a lot of the charm of the original and played a game with the endless sequels that were made in that period of horror classics and today have their very peculiar, but quite nice pop cultural value. The last part of the grand master came years later. "Scream 4" (2011) was not quite in the jolt of the original, and incidentally designed as such, trilogy, but was still entertaining and the signature of the director was still noticeable and valuable. Seven years after Wes Craven's death, the franchise is now being driven to the wall by insanely arrogant film producers and the woke age along with its concomitants of lack of respect and lack of originality of its own.
But from the beginning. The new Scream film claims to be a "Requel", as it also certainly does not forget to mention permanently in the film in clumsy reference to the self-irony of the original. A "Requel", we are instructed in the film, is a mixture of a sequel and a remake. So far so good, but more on that later.
The film actually begins in the classic Scream style and fulfills the one pole of the remake quite alright: an initial murder, which however remains only a murder attempt, the establishment of a circle of friends, (apparent) love for horror films and slasher moments, which now already obviously should not come up short. Then the other pole of a "Requel" comes into play: Connections to the previous parts are built up, old characters are introduced and the myth is dug into as if one were a mole. So it comes out that apparently everything revolves around the previously unknown child of Loomis, one of the two killers from the first part. A classic movie flow is unwound, with allusions to the horror movie world, a classic story progression, and even painfully foreseeable plot developments. As I said, so far so good.
As a viewer, you realize that while the weakest film in the series is taking place before your very eyes here, you still don't get the impression that this part was actually going to be particularly bad either. But to err is human, and trusting modern Hollywood productions is about as appropriate for one's health as stabbing one's heart with a long kitchen knife. The finale of the film should become the confirmation of this thesis and concomitantly the destruction of the preceding 85 minutes. Here the filmmakers, i.e. Screenwriters, directors and producers, seem to have succumbed to a premonition that their film would fail. But this lack of self-confidence on the part of the uncreative rascals was simply passed off, and such a thing is increasingly easy to do these days, in an age of wokeness, the desire for dead discourse, and the lack of ability for one's own self-criticism. Once again, the fans of the original and its successors were identified as the world devourers of modern cinematic art, i.e. Those who always raised a franchise to the Everest that today's uncreative filmmakers keep trying to blow up.
The finale of "Scream" (2022) pursues the thesis that those fans are always the branches in the gears of the bicycle ridden by the well-heeled and only ever demanding Hollywood aristocrats of today. Those fans who make up the very largest part of a potential audience, and who so far seem to have only made the mistake of passionately liking a franchise. The "Scream" franchise is one such franchise that has been kept alive by such fans, fans who are now portrayed as potentially insane murderers in this new installment. At the same time, they are still too dumb to understand modern movies, such as "The Babadook" (2014), and the derivation for this is that they - watch out, cleverness afoot - are into movies like "Scream" (1996), i.e. Those stupid and bad horror movies.
This is admittedly explained in a - attention - "Requel" by just such a luminary of that time. Well, thank you!
The whole thing could have been made humorous and more all-encompassing, perhaps in such a way that modern Woke society gets at least a bit of fat in a reflected way - then you could have taken it self-ironic - but one-sided moralizing of people, the basic ideas of democracy, discussion and the freedom of art is no fun. It's only through the finale that small points in the film that you could have simply overlooked before also start to bother you, but in the retrospective, i.e. After the final viewing of the film, this no longer seems possible. The disrespectful treatment of Dewey (David Arquette), for example, the clumsy man-bashing, i.e. The right-around variant of sexism in the 21st century, and a half-dozen other pandering to a Twitter community, which is 90% sure not a dollar for a tickets to see this film are simply too much of a bad thing. In the end, postulating that the film was made "For Wes" is probably no longer just questionable after having constantly ridiculed one's craft.
Those responsible should be ashamed of this film, but since shame obviously hardly seems to be a thing these days, that's not to be expected either way. Just as little as good counter-arguments from those who refuse to communicate and the modern Lancelots of discourse killers. In such a structure one does not need to mention any names. As is well known, fans of 90s horror wrote them on murder slips anyway and exchange them full of hatred in forums in order to throw branches that break the neck of modern film art into the bicycle spokes. Irony off. But irony also seems to be one of those great things that are almost completely lost these days, so what the heck.
Arrogant, stupid and certainly without such "unfashionable" values as respect and discourse skills.
But from the beginning. The new Scream film claims to be a "Requel", as it also certainly does not forget to mention permanently in the film in clumsy reference to the self-irony of the original. A "Requel", we are instructed in the film, is a mixture of a sequel and a remake. So far so good, but more on that later.
The film actually begins in the classic Scream style and fulfills the one pole of the remake quite alright: an initial murder, which however remains only a murder attempt, the establishment of a circle of friends, (apparent) love for horror films and slasher moments, which now already obviously should not come up short. Then the other pole of a "Requel" comes into play: Connections to the previous parts are built up, old characters are introduced and the myth is dug into as if one were a mole. So it comes out that apparently everything revolves around the previously unknown child of Loomis, one of the two killers from the first part. A classic movie flow is unwound, with allusions to the horror movie world, a classic story progression, and even painfully foreseeable plot developments. As I said, so far so good.
As a viewer, you realize that while the weakest film in the series is taking place before your very eyes here, you still don't get the impression that this part was actually going to be particularly bad either. But to err is human, and trusting modern Hollywood productions is about as appropriate for one's health as stabbing one's heart with a long kitchen knife. The finale of the film should become the confirmation of this thesis and concomitantly the destruction of the preceding 85 minutes. Here the filmmakers, i.e. Screenwriters, directors and producers, seem to have succumbed to a premonition that their film would fail. But this lack of self-confidence on the part of the uncreative rascals was simply passed off, and such a thing is increasingly easy to do these days, in an age of wokeness, the desire for dead discourse, and the lack of ability for one's own self-criticism. Once again, the fans of the original and its successors were identified as the world devourers of modern cinematic art, i.e. Those who always raised a franchise to the Everest that today's uncreative filmmakers keep trying to blow up.
The finale of "Scream" (2022) pursues the thesis that those fans are always the branches in the gears of the bicycle ridden by the well-heeled and only ever demanding Hollywood aristocrats of today. Those fans who make up the very largest part of a potential audience, and who so far seem to have only made the mistake of passionately liking a franchise. The "Scream" franchise is one such franchise that has been kept alive by such fans, fans who are now portrayed as potentially insane murderers in this new installment. At the same time, they are still too dumb to understand modern movies, such as "The Babadook" (2014), and the derivation for this is that they - watch out, cleverness afoot - are into movies like "Scream" (1996), i.e. Those stupid and bad horror movies.
This is admittedly explained in a - attention - "Requel" by just such a luminary of that time. Well, thank you!
The whole thing could have been made humorous and more all-encompassing, perhaps in such a way that modern Woke society gets at least a bit of fat in a reflected way - then you could have taken it self-ironic - but one-sided moralizing of people, the basic ideas of democracy, discussion and the freedom of art is no fun. It's only through the finale that small points in the film that you could have simply overlooked before also start to bother you, but in the retrospective, i.e. After the final viewing of the film, this no longer seems possible. The disrespectful treatment of Dewey (David Arquette), for example, the clumsy man-bashing, i.e. The right-around variant of sexism in the 21st century, and a half-dozen other pandering to a Twitter community, which is 90% sure not a dollar for a tickets to see this film are simply too much of a bad thing. In the end, postulating that the film was made "For Wes" is probably no longer just questionable after having constantly ridiculed one's craft.
Those responsible should be ashamed of this film, but since shame obviously hardly seems to be a thing these days, that's not to be expected either way. Just as little as good counter-arguments from those who refuse to communicate and the modern Lancelots of discourse killers. In such a structure one does not need to mention any names. As is well known, fans of 90s horror wrote them on murder slips anyway and exchange them full of hatred in forums in order to throw branches that break the neck of modern film art into the bicycle spokes. Irony off. But irony also seems to be one of those great things that are almost completely lost these days, so what the heck.
Arrogant, stupid and certainly without such "unfashionable" values as respect and discourse skills.