{"id":52021,"date":"2022-01-18T14:33:50","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T19:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=52021"},"modified":"2022-01-18T14:35:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T19:35:04","slug":"scream-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/01\/scream-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Scream \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I love the original Wes Craven \u201cScream\u201d from 1996. Not only do I count it among my favorite horror movies of all-time, it\u2019s also one of my favorite comedies. The Ghostface mask worn by the film\u2019s killers has given me plenty of sleepless nights, and I consider some of its jump scares to be among the best in cinema history. Then there\u2019s all the reflexive humor about the characters being trapped in a horror movie and needing to follow certain \u201crules\u201d to stay alive. Add in some likeable, memorable characters (I even have a soft spot for Rose McGowen\u2019s Tatum, though some fans can\u2019t see past a bad decision that leads to her death), and you\u2019ve got a true modern classic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            I didn\u2019t much care for the sequels, though. The subsequent films could never come up with characters, jokes, or kills that could match the magic of the original. But now there is a \u201cre-quel\u201d version of \u201cScream\u201d is in theaters, and it comes the closest to re-capturing my love for the 1996 film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Perhaps the biggest surprise in the original \u201cScream\u201d was the death of the heavily-promoted Drew Barrymore in the opening scene in the film. In the 2022 \u201cScream,\u201d the biggest surprise comes just after the opening scene, where Tara (Jenny Ortega) is attacked by Ghostface. I came to really care about the character in an awfully short time, with her making selfless decisions and admiring horror movies that aren\u2019t all about blood and guts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The return of Ghostface brings Tara\u2019s sister and new main character Sam (Melissa Barrera) back to the town of Woodsboro. Sam is the daughter of Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), one of the killers from the original film. She\u2019s allowed her parentage to ruin her life, and she expresses her frustration in a surprisingly emotional sequence for a series largely associated with gore and smart-aleck humor. She arrives with her well-meaning boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) in tow, and quickly acclimates herself with Tara\u2019s circle of friends, including Amber (Mikey Madison), Chad (Mason Gooding), Mindy (Jasmine Savoy Brown), Liv (Sonia Ben Ammar), and the groaningly-named Wes (Dylan Minnette). Sam, and to a lesser degree Tara, are great new characters, but most of the others fall flat. Amber says that Liv is \u201ctoo boring\u201d to be the killer at one point, and from the audience I heckled, \u201cthat could be any of you.\u201d These movies lend themselves well to heckling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, the film knows that we aren\u2019t really here for the new kids. It\u2019s not long before we get the return of series stalwarts Dewey (David Arquette), Gale (Courtney Cox), and original main character Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). They can be in the movie, but the movie can\u2019t be \u201cabout\u201d them, so sayeth the rules of the re-quel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            All the pieces are in place for a great slasher, and while I can\u2019t say I agree with all the moves they make, the movie does a lot right. There are some fun detours, like Dewey riding in a car with a determined Sam and thinking he might have better chances against Ghostface. But the movie can\u2019t quite stick the landing in the third act, with too much attention given to uninteresting characters and the identity of killer(s) maybe chosen at random by dartboard for all the sense it makes. Still, this is a worthy successor to the 1996 film, which is more than I can say for the three preceding sequels. It is the first \u201cScream\u201d not to be directed by the late Wes Craven (it is credited to Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) and it seems they understand the series better now than he did in later installments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScream\u201d is rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout, and some sexual references. Its running time is 114 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             I love the original Wes Craven \u201cScream\u201d from 1996. Not only do I count it among my favorite horror movies of all-time, it\u2019s also one of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":52022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1032],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52021"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52023,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52021\/revisions\/52023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}