As we near the end of the season, it’s time to do a little catching up on a series that I stopped caring about well before it tried to reinvent itself. I had heard that the recent Scream sequels were actually good, which would put them head and shoulders above the 2nd and 3rd entries which were middling to outright bad. For a movie that was defined by it’s knowledge of and adherence to meta-horror tropes, though, having a couple absolute trash sequels was the perfect way to honor the genre conventions.

A good 15 years after the events of the first movie, Sidney Prescott has written a book about no longer hiding and remaining the victim. The last stop on her book tour is none other than Woodsboro, her old hometown on the very same week as the anniversary of the original murders. This might seem like a spectacularly bad idea that is just begging for something awful to happen but actually it’s fine and everything is ok and nobody dies. Just kidding, obviously copycat murders immediately start up with a whole new batch of high school kids that get creepy phone calls before being stabbed with a very large knife. With Dewey now the Sheriff and Gale his wife up to her old snooping ways, it’s old school meets new school with the whodunnit in full swing as the bodies start piling up.

I liked the direction that this movie decided to go with the meta-textual concept for the killings being a reboot to the franchise. It’s a great way to be able to essentially make the same plot from the first movie that worked so well while still having it play into the “oh so clever” genre savvy characters and viewers expectations. Obviously the film sets up all the standard red herrings for who the killer(s) could be so we can have the big reveal at the end but then when you think about the timing of where everyone would have to have been and how quick they would have to move to get there and then back it makes very little sense. The motivations for the killings, however, are fun and I like that those too have moved into a sort of meta reason rather than the standard revenge plot from the original three.

If I have any major gripe with the film, it’s probably that the time we spend focused on Dewey and Gale feels almost entirely wasted. Neither of them is bringing anything particularly necessary to the plot nor are they doing anything all that interesting. Most of the time it feels like the movie is desperately trying to find something relevant for them to do but can’t seem to find it. While the return of Sidney to Woodsboro is obviously central to the plot and themes of the film and Neve Campbell does a great job, you could excise Dewey and Gale entirely for more focus on the new cast and it would be for the better. The new cast has some good chemistry but we don’t get to see it as much as I would like because the movie is trying to cram so much in.

Definitely better than most slashers out there but for sure appealing more to the people like me that get a kick out of messing with the genre.

Score: 4 out of 5