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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 431769" data-attributes="member: 23">It's only taken me almost four years but last night, for the first time, I watched...Scream (2022) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fntvb.tmsimg.com%2Fassets%2Fp20207831_v_h8_ah.jpg%3Fw%3D1280%26h%3D720&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=773c387158c65541e1f8376d0b2793ee575777721dd3e0d05d1fa11b834e9e78" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 910px" /> Ahead of watching, I expected to feel similarly towards this one as I did Scream 4. That is, a product trying  to revive a series that doesn't necessarily need reviving. Still, with the three key leads from the original film returning it was going to be worth a look.This one felt a little off from the very beginning. The Dimension logo is strongly associated with this series for me (the first two instalments were probably the first place I would have seen it), so its absence took away a little anticipatory excitement.Then came the opening scene which set the tone for the good and the bad of this film. Firstly, I didn't mind the near-recreation of the 1996 film's opening scene.. actually I enjoyed it and thought it had decent atmosphere even if it lacked the intense build-up of the Drew Barrymore sequence. Incidentally, I thought Jenna Ortega has a similar look to young Neve Campbell which I'm sure must be intentional.Sadly, the opening scene  also set the tone of this film having its cake and eating it. In this case, it sold us the opening kill by referencing the original directly - this time the questions all related to the Stab series to give a meta flavour - and then had the opening scene girl survive.I was on the fence about less-than-subtle directorial nods to the original, such as Tara leaning on the kitchen worktop, pulling a knife out of a block as she discussed scary movies with a killer on the phone, but at the same time I put these down as a "requel" thing, in the same way 2018's Halloween had covered some of the same ground as the original film and its sequels. The term "requel" by the way, is defined within the film:I'm not 100% sold on the term. That is, I haven't quite got my head round how a requel is different from a soft reboot. Or indeed, a sequel. Is Scream 4 not a requel because it didn't reference the original enough? Or is it simply because the term didn't exist then? And it seems that a "legacy character" has a different meaning than "legacy hero" in comics, which usually applies to those superheroes who have taken on the identity of superheroes who have come before (in that sense, all the sequel's Ghostfaces would be "legacy villains").On the subject of "legacy", the surnames of two of the new actors were rather familiar and a quick search confirmed that, yes, these are the sons of Dennis Quaid (and Meg Ryan) and Cuba Gooding, Jr.That said, I do like the "ongoing storyline" explanation, in that it has characters directly related to the original interacting with those legacy characters. And there's certainly an abundance of those here: Billy Loomis's daughter; Randy Meeks's niece and nephew (as well as a return-cameo from his sister Martha); son of Scream 4's "Deputy Judy" Hicks (who returns herself as the town's new sheriff).  Whether or not they're all needed is a different matter, but I'd give most the benefit of the doubt in that the ground is being cleared for some to return in the sequels (and they killed off the least-interesting of the four new relations anyway).Typically for a sequel the kills are more graphic than earlier films. Mercifully it mostly avoids "creative kills" but instead gives almost disturbingly nasty depictions of stabbings. This level of visual information really isn't my thing, but still feels connected to the series' roots since even the original didn't go the less-is-more route when it came to the gore.There were two significant deaths by virtue of the fact that they were returnees. Neither was particularly surprising to me, but I still found them effective. [SPOILER]Judy's death wasn't something I knew would happen, but - to my relief - she'd played a fairly small role in this film anyway, so was happy for her to be sacrificed for the progression of the story. I did smile almost nostalgically when her lemon squares were referenced.[/SPOILER]While I have judiciously avoided spoilers, I had read certain comments and video titles along the way that suggested fans weren't happy about a certain death which I'd taken to be [SPOILER]Dewey. I didn't know for certain, and I'd thought it applied to Scream VI rather than this film, so at least his death came as a surprise as much as possible.  Frankly, he's had so many fake-out deaths that it was difficult to believe it even as I watched. I'm keeping everything crossed that they don't undo this one as that would just be beyond credibility. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a Dewey fan, which I know puts me in a small minority. Beyond the first film, I just felt Arquette was goofing around too much and Dewey became a pain to watch (certainly in terms of the original trilogy). He had a terrifically memorable "death" in Scream 2, and I've generally been minded that this would have been the right time for him to depart. That said, I found him watchable enough in Scream 4, and I actually really liked the grizzled and flawed Dewey we met in the 2022 film (for the first time, I found Dewey a more interesting and  watchable character than Gale) so this gave some weight to his departure and made it more meaningful. [/SPOILER]As far as the Ghostface reveal goes, I had an initial shortlist of three:Tara was in there for a while, based mainly on the specific lyrics of "Red Right Hand" that were played at one point referencing the scheme being "designed and directed" by a Red Right Hand. Tara, of course had been stabbed in the hand in the opening scene..  but some doubt was added because that was her  left hand. Also, the only way she could feasibly have been involved was coming on board after the opening scene, which was the main reason I ruled her out pretty quickly.Chad Meeks-Martin was in there for me as perhaps the least obvious, which was my only reason for suspecting him. So much for my gut instinct.My number one suspect was always [SPOILER="Killer #1"]Richie, based on the fact that he had a lot of screen time and was aggressively "nice". With each scene I felt he became more obvious as someone with an ulterior motive and by the time he was saying they wouldn't go back to the hospital for the inhaler it was screamingly obvious (of course that inhaler was going to be a Chekhov's gun since they hammered us round the head with it from the beginning). Still, I was chuffed to guessed one correctly, and Jack Quaid did do a nice flip into psycho killer. [/SPOILER]Sadly, the only notable thing about [ISPOILER]Amber was her Kristin Shepard wonky smirk, and Mikey Madison was pretty terrible at doing deranged. [/ISPOILER]Spitting while speaking - as gross a visual as it may be - does not a good performance make (I always felt Matthew Lilard did this to overcompensate for the lack of any genuine intensity, and the same holds true here, but doubly bad because it's a clunky imitation of what came before). I really wish the second killer had been someone - anyone -else.I thought the use of the "legacy characters" was really good. All three probably had smaller roles than in previous films, but it didn't really tell because of how they were utilised. As always, things really came to life when Sid arrived. I was all geared up to dive into Scream VI, but I've now read that there is no Sid, which makes it feel like a pointless exercise to me. Still, it does see the return of Kirby, whose Easter egg I missed while watching this film but read about afterwards.Some of the meta stuff was enjoyable. Some of it felt quite clunky, such as a character complaining that the new Stab film was simply called Stab when it should be Stab 8 or 9 or whatever, and even going on to say that it went off the rails beginning with the fifth film in the series. None of it's worse than the "sequels suck" discussion in Scream 2, so I've probably been a bit overly-critical of the film in general. Perhaps by this point I simply have less goodwill about this sort of thing and after a gap of this length expectations for a slick, genre-defining film are going to be higher.There were also some covert criticisms of the 1996 film, done through the filter of Stab movie discussion. Tara described the original Stab as "super-Nineties" and "overlit".Similarly, Sid criticising Ghostface 2022 as the most derivative one for even using the same house could be seen as the writers covering their arses, as though shining a light on the shortcomings of their own script will excuse it or even make it seem clever. Here's where I did find some goodwill, though, as it was nice to get back to that house, and I felt pleased as a viewer to have recognised the house some time before the big reveal moment (even though it's very obvious and perhaps I was even slow to recognise it).There's no danger of this film being to the genre of the early Twenties what the original Scream was to the late Nineties. It's probably not even a contender for the best of the Scream sequels. Still, with expectations levelled, there's still entertainment to be found, and overall it's a worthy entry in the series. There isn't an instalment yet that hasn't been watchable in some way, and that's saying a lot for a horror franchise.I daren't watch in case there are any Scream VI spoilers.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?