Scream 7 is trash

Stu, you know, this guy.

★★--Oof. This film was all-nonsense. Kevin Williamson really fell off. Here are some of the things that really stuck out as stupid from this movie… 

 

The panic room that makes no sense, they leave, and you can access through the wall. Why even have a panic room? Also, why don’t you have more guns? And why can’t you shoot for shit? Also, Joel McHale, Sidney’s husband, is the town’s sherriff, you’d think maybe he’d have the cops he works with protect his family since Ghostface is actively trying to kill them. And it has long been heavily implied that Sidney’s husband was Detective Mark Kincaid from the third movie. In maybe Scream 4 we are told that he is named Mark, but now it’s this other Mark. I guess that name isn’t off the table for ole Sid, which sort of implies that they never had a serious thing going on. Ok. 

 

Ger.

Speaking of dumb retcons, spoilers below, Matthew Lillard is back as Stu Macher, sort of. He is pretty funny and obviously having a good time. Is that a positive though? Overall, the characters in this film are bad and include all the stereotypes except athlete. Have the boyfriend. The weird boy They are played by Asa Germann and Sam Rechner and are interchangeable. The black BFF. The gay guy. The theater chick, who was the only one of them I recognized. Played Mckenna Grace from the post-covid Ghostbuster films and who was just in that Regretting You movie. And the survivor girl. They all barely have names.  

Woman that plays Sid’s daughter, Isabel May, at least looks super cute. She does look 30 though. Is 25. Her face is kind of an amalgamation of Juliet Lewis, that Linda Cardellini woman from ER and Freaks and Geeks, Alison Lohman from the aughts, Maria Bello, and some Jennifer Lawrence. 

 

Gail is still a bitch. Though now she’s traumatized. You feel sorry for her. Courteney Cox looks pretty good compared to the other last few movies. She’s crazy as fuck though and she moves like an old lady. Neve Campbell is back as Sidney nee Prescott. Everything about her character and performance were lame. And Jimmy Tatro who I still think of as the alleged dick-drawer in American Vandal is there as the dumb guy half of the standard opening kill. 

 

Camp, who seems like a real C U Next Tuesdee, talked a bunch of shit on social, saying “The boycott didn’t work. The critics hate didn’t work. The pathetic leaks didn’t work. What worked was audiences coming out and making the film a success.” I’d wait to see how long you stay in that top spot before doing a victory lap, but that’s just me though. 

 

Which brings me to the two main legacy characters from 5 and 6 that aren’t there and are never mentioned, which is super weird, while Randy’s niece, played by Jasmin Savoy Brown, and nephew, Mason Gooding, are there for reasons that make no sense. Mason is Cuba Gooding Jr.‘s kid. Jesus, he is extremely handsome, even by nepo-baby standards. He is a legit future STAR, in my opinion. I’ve been holding onto his stock since Scream 5… But it hasn’t paid out quite as much as I would have expected at this point. Maybe Heart Eyes and this will change that. Two franchises ain’t bad. Also, Hollywood isn’t forcing him on us like Austin Butler. He seems to be coming up surprisingly organically. 

Ger.

Anyway, so I guess Gooding and Brown will carry the franchise on going forward since they conveniently survived. That Melissa Barrera girl got fired because she told the truth about Israel engaging in state sanctioned terrorism. This resulted in the previously mentioned boycotts. Yeah, fuck that Camp lady. I guess Jenna Ortega is too big.

Some more shit is that when the first sort of red herring Ghostface guy gets dispatched in record time, they sure do take their time on masking the guy. When they finally do, you can see why. It was just some crazy guy.

 

They introduce AI into the plot, like someone has made an app or whatever where users can change into legacy characters. Just cheesy as shit. I briefly suspected it was Joel using the program because of their similar heights and looks and weight and what not. Not long after Stu shows back up, we get a story from a crazy guy working at the local mental hospital. I recognized him from all kinds of things from the 90s, including Dutch and Can’t Hardly Wait. He tells Sidney that Stu is alive and has amnesia. Yeah, things t’s getting crazy. But, you know, recognize that guy. So obviously he’s the killer. Or one of them. At one point, in regard to Stu possibly being alive, Randy’s niece starts talking about the rules. “Ridiculous retcon by any franchise standards,”she says. Her brother then says something like “we’re not doing the rules anymore.”

 

Lastly, the killer has unexplained super strength. Ghostface lifts some guy by the head, puts his head through a pointy tap, and then beers starts coming out of his mouth. I guess that was cool.

There is one good thing, a 15-minute stretch that is as tense as anything in the franchise. Things got a little rowdy in my theater on opening night during that run. But it didn’t last, and afterwards I heard everyone universally talking shit, even people that didn’t look like cinephiles, if you know what I mean. 

Immediately upon leaving the movie, I had it second to last. VI I had lower. But after writing about this a little bit, I now think this seventh film is the nadir. My ranking is Scream, 4, 2, the fifth one just titled Scream (2022), 3, VI, and 7. The original is a five-star movie. 4 and 2, four stars. 5 three stars. 3, VI, and 7, two stars. If it weren’t for that tense 15 minutes, this would be a one-star movie. On a related note, I’m done with this franchise. Unless the next one has insane buzz, I’m not falling for this again.

Sick - John Hyams - 2022

★★★★-You had me at home invasion slasher from Blumhouse written by Kevin Williamson of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and The Faculty fame. The whole COVID-19 backdrop is having a smart toilet in April 2020 shit. With that, I was able to make due with the rolls I embezzled from work until the supply chain stabilized. Fuck yeah. 

So how was it? Not too bad. Fun, tight slasher that made me sort of nostalgic for the start of the pandemic when I thought I was going to die and never left the house. Fun times those were. Also fun, a movie that gets some audience participation, which this film does by throwing us back into the early days of the lockdown. 

The flick follows two best buds, Parker (Gideon Adlon) and Miri (Bethlehem Million), riding it out at one of their parents' secluded lake house. To try and make quarantine “fun”, Parker’s on-again, off-again DJ (Dylan Sprayberry) shows up. He's trying to save whatever they have after a video surfaces of her making out with some other dude on spring break or whatever. Soon after they hit the hay, shit goes down. A masked killer (remember, social distancing!) slips in, steals their phones, and begins to terrorize them, first with loud music and then violence. Major plot hole here, by the by, why not just kill everyone in their sleep and not wake them up with bullshit? Sport/torture, I guess, plus we gotta get to it somehow. 

Adlon was the only young person I really recognized, though they all are pretty stellar. You may remember her from Blockers. I sort of get her confused with Mikey Madison who was Manson gal Sadie Atkins in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, one of the kids in the fifth Scream movie, one of the daughters in Better Things, so forth. What is weird is that Better Things is a show where Pamela Adlon raises her girls, one who looks just like this woman. Then I find out the star of this movie is Pamela Adlon's real daughter. Some others that show up are one of the Langmores from Ozark, Marc Menchaca, who's lane is apparently creepy lake person, and the actress Jane Adams whom I recognize from The Anniversary Party and Happiness which I've been trying to forget since watching in 1999, fucking IFC. One Joel Courtney makes an appearance and is murdered at the beginning. I couldn't place him but looked him up. He was the main kid in Super 8, which was great. Only other things I've seen from director John Hyams was the exorcism episode from the second season of Chucky, a show I'm kind of obsessed with, and an alright movie from 2020 called Alone. Someone else in the movie that is sort of interesting is one Chris Reid. He is Brad Pitt's stunt double. Pretty good likeness. 

Besides the irritating plot hole, there were a couple other things that maybe should've been work shopped. Not trying to give anything away here, but the whole vengeance/motivation was a little weak. However, it isn't obvious. Also, I guess everyone's motivation for becoming a slasher in these types of movies is pretty bullshitty. So whatever. 

The other thing is that the killer thinks they're going to get away with it. When a victim points out that there is DNA everywhere, the solution is to burn down the house and the cops will blame it on selfish kids who couldn't social distance nor even keep a cabin from going up in flames. Well, that won't work since there are murders at multiple locations and people that aren't even part of the group. Whatever, best not to overthink. But these things were sort of dumb. 

However, all in all, this is a film that pays off. It snapshots a collective shitty time for everyone, and offers some surprises. Not a lot more I could ask for. Good shit.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is the worst movie of all time

Man, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Quick break from the Halloween movies. Shit ton more to go there, god help me. Breaking it up with IKWYDLS. Did not like. Did at one time. Chalking it up to not aging well as you definitely know you are watching a movie in the late 1990s. Twas the curse of Scream. Four out of five horror movies from IKWYDLS up until The Blair Witch Project (maybe even Saw) are the same. Up and coming 20 somethings playing high school/college archetypes that make regular snarky, self-referential statements that say "we're aware of that we are in a horror movie." See Disturbing Behavior, Final Destination, Halloween H20, Idle Hands, The Faculty, Urban Legend, so forth. All the same shit. This was the first of those (and one of the most poorly done) and is more or less a Scream clone without the satire. Worst movie of all time. Can't believe I used to like this shit.

Veronica Vaughn... So hot. Want to touch the heiney 

Pros: Solid 90s cast (though none of them are especially great at acting). Decent bit of nostalgia for me. Still remember seeing it in the theater and digging it. Pretty ladies though Jennifer Love Hewitt couldn't be wearing more clothes. Typical outfits include a long skirt/sweater or overalls with a long sleeve. Anne Heche and Veronica Vaughn are both looking fly though.

Cons: The first of about a million Scream rip offs. Soundtrack is insanely garbage. Take the worst song of all time from like 10 decent bands. It's a pretty meh story. No nudity. Kills are meh. Acting is surprisingly bad. As was the dialogue.

Gist of the flick...Four recent high school graduates--played by Jennifer Love Hewitt (Julie), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Helen), Ryan Phillippe (Barry), and Freddie Prinze Jr. (Ray)--hit a pedestrian coming around a curve on an isolated backwoods road in a fishing town in New England.  Instead of going to the police, they decide to dump the body in the ocean, only it turns out he isn't dead so they attempt to straight up murder him by drowning. A year later, with everyone underachieving, they all start getting letters stating that "I know what you did last summer." Eventually the person writing the letters comes at them, knocking them off, along with a few other people, one at a time.

This guy

Written by screenwriter Kevin Williamson who did Scream, Scream II, Scream IV, and The Faculty. Dude was hot shit at the time and every horror movie that came out the four years or so after Scream were all the same, as I've notes several times. Out of the five movies of his I've watched recently, this one is definitely the worst. Directed by Jim Gillespie who hasn't really done anything except for this movie. In addition to the main four, the movie also features Johnny Galecki from The Big Bang Theory which I refuse to ever watch, Anne Heche who has more or less disappeared though she was always great in everything (she seems to have gotten a pretty bad deal for whatever reason), and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras who married Pete Sampras and played Veronica "So-Hot-Want-To-Touch-The-Heiney" Vaughn in Billy Madison.

Not a lot of kills in this movie but the best is definitely the first which is this Max kid who seems to have it pretty rough. He is boiling crab and shit at the fish market alone at night. Killer dude sort of comes up to him head on though this Max gentleman can't seem him very well because of all the steam. But he is trying though. Squinting and shit. When the hook comes in and gets him under the chin and he is dragged over the boiling pots and stabbed repeatedly and what have you. It looks pretty good and I thought the film had potential at that point. But, yeah, there are some pretty bad kills, too. Actually, all the rest of them are bad. Like with SMG who fought the dude off and pretty much got away home free only to look back when she is 10 feet from survival when she is murdered behind a bunch of trash (that should have been recycled).  

Best line of the movie comes from Julie after Barry says some dumb shit about how the letters they are getting that say "I know what you did last summer" likely aren't related to the guy they ran over and then tried to drown the year before. His character basically spends the whole movie being extremely disrespectful to everyone and generally just being a cock. Like when he is a dick to Galecki's character, Max, for no reason, I guess because he is nice to Julie and thus trying to date out of his social caste or something, basically shoving the guy's face and screaming "Shots! Get the fuck out of here!" He later assaults dude again when they think he is the one behind the notes and then tells the girls, who look like Gellar and Love Hewitt because they are those chicks, that they "look like shit" just to be a dick. This is all mighty aggressive behavior and dude is always wrong. Anyways, he says something like "You did a lot of things last summer." Julie replies "Yeah, well, only one murder comes to mind." Noice. Julie also develivers the worst line of the movie. A "what are you waiting for" scream to the killer who isn't around. Huffpost did an article on this movie back when where they explain that this was thought up by some kid who won a contest or something, got to be on set, and chose a moment where the actors had to do whatever he wanted (within reason, I assume) and this was it. JLH claims to remember it fondly, though it groan worthy these days, saying “People don’t know that that was just like some kid who loved horror movies... I’m glad I got to do that for him.” That is some pretty cool shit and I am a little bit jealous but it's still a dumb moment.

This brings me to a little shit with this flick... So the catalyst for this whole movie is hitting the dude and then attempting to murder him. Why not go to the police since the driver, Ray, was sober as a judge. It's because, according to Barry, no one would believe that he wasn't driving his car. "Nobody drives my car but me," he says at one point. I'm all about cops being full of shit and pinning shit on people and and what the fuck but this is dumb. Four doing alright white kids, at least half of them sober, hit a dude on a dead man's curve, telling the truth which isn't that bad. All this shit is grossly unnecessary. But overall, this post-hitting the guy and what have you, is probably the best scene in the flick. There we see solid inner workings of dumb, adolescent brains in crisis mode. They did some shit and they have to deal with it. Argue about how they should deal with. Do some more, much worse shit, and then have to psychically deal with it for the rest of their lives, which isn't long for exactly half of them. So yeah.

Party of one! IDK what that means

MVP has to be JLH. Before this movie, no idea who she is. Afterwards, she is one of the hottest chicks in Hollywood. She was in that show Party of Five but she was like third banana in that show. This really elevated her to leading (ish) lady status. Of the four kids, she is either first or second in overall performance (Phillippe is alright as well). People sort of realized that she was impossibly good-looking (she was more of a kid in PoF). It didn't hurt that this film really brought in the bucks, gaining $125 mill at the box office. She would parlay this role into the leads in films like Heartbreakers, Can't Hardly Wait (a great teen flick), the sequel to this flick I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and the show Ghost Whisperer. She really had a moment there and it was all thanks to this role, 100%.

Overall thoughts... Promising start but it drags on and ends with a lot of anti-climax. Gist of that is Julie thinks Ray, they are the last two standing, is the murderer and attacks him. She gets help from a fisherman who ends up being the real killer. They get it on--fighting way, not sexy way--and the killer gets his hand lopped off and flung into the ocean. Spoiler, dude ain't dead. The cops are all, "any idea why this guy is coming after all of yous." "Shit no, officer." And that is that except a little pointless maybe dream bit at the end that they ignore in the sequel which, hey hey, was way better than this POS mostly due to Jack Black and lot of unintentional hilarity. So look forward to that.

The Faculty is the greatest movie of all time

The Faculty. Most pro meth movie of all time. Saw it sophomore year of HS at the $1 theater (watched a shit ton of movies that year at that theater, remember it super fondly, RIP the $1 theater) and fucking loved it. At the time my favorite of the 700 high school movies from that year. I also got the soundtrack which was great. Had some Garbage, some Oasis, a Creed cover of "I'm Eighteen" which isn't terrible, and an awesome rendition of "Another Brick in the Wall" from one pop supergroup Class of 1999 featuring Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Stephen Perkins and Martyn LeNoble of Jane's Addiction/Porno for Pyros. That supergroup covered three of my favorite five bands at the time. Anywho, what I remembered about the film itself was that John Stewart was in it and dies hilariously via a Bic through the eye, they bet hard on Usher being a breakout star, and the movie was insanely pro meth. All of these things are true and are what you should walk away with from said movie. So of course it's still dope but way doper than I expected. In fact, greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Rip-off of other sci-fi thrillers. Ouch.

Pros: Great cast. Like amazingly so. Josh Hartnett is like the coolest. The plot was super fun albeit a total rip off of like 100 other science fiction flicks. Pretty good pacing. Wrapped up with a lot of personal nostalgia. Pretty ladies.

Cons: Basically Scream with aliens which was getting sort old by that point and is pretty dated as a movie from the late 1990s. Actually, looking at the credit list, wasn't shocked to see Kevin Williamson, who wrote most of the Scream franchise, wrote the screenplay for this as well.

Gist of it... A motley crew of high school student archetypes--the overachieving cheerleader (Jordana Brewster), the goth maybe lesbian (Clea DuVall), the new kid/southern belle (Laura Harris), the genius (Josh Hartnett), the miscast dumb jock (Shawn Hatosy), and the nerd (Elijah Wood)--must save the world from an alien invasion that for whatever reason has begun at their high school, first getting into their teachers' brains and taking control, then moving on to the town folk, student body, and their parents. Only not all of the archetypes are what they seem. Spoiler, some of them are also possessed by aliens. Movie was directed by one of the masters, Robert Rodrigues, who has done all kinds of dope ass shit (From Dusk Till Dawn, the Sin City movies, Planet Terror, El Mariachi, Machete, to name a fraction).

Got to give it up for the casting director in this flick. We get an insane 1990s ensemble, like if you were drafting 90s teens, most of these would be in your top ten, plus the faculty themselves are way more star studded than what I recalled. Some of the teachers and parents include an equally star studded bunch in Daniel von Bargen (Kruger in Seinfeld), hotty Famke Janssen who was Jean Grey in X-Men, super hotty Salma Hayek, Piper Laurie from Twin Peaks, Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin), Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith from Cheers), Robert "T2" Patrick, and Jon Stewart. Usher Raymond is also in the movie. This is when they were really trying to make him a movie star. But dude can't act so he has maybe like five lines even though he was on the damn cover. Even get some recognizable extras. Like playing "Fuck Up #1"and "Fuck Up #2"--those their listed roles on IMDB--are Fuck Up #1 IRL Danny Masterson (famous for Hyde from That 70's Show and rape) and Wiley Wiggins whom you might recognize as the main freshman kid Mitch Kramer in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused which went instant classic, not sure what he's up to now but he doesn't appear to be raping people so I wish him the best.

Best line of the movie is "not the pole!" screamed by Elijah Wood when in his intro like six dudes pick him up, spread his legs, and repeatedly smash his genitals into a light pole. These guys are not chill. 

Favorite scene is easily the one where they recreate the old John Carpenter's The Thing blood test except instead of a hot copper wire they all do meth ("skat" that Hartnett's character makes in his basement) which turns out to be the aliens' weakness. So basically a slightly more exaggerated effect on the aliens than on humans. In it they each have to do a bump to prove that they aren't aliens. I couldn't imagine a worse way to get fucked up than doing meth with potential aliens that are trying to take over but maybe that's just me. It's also great that one of the hulks out when she takes it because she is indeed other worldly.

MVP is absolutely Josh Hartnett, awful hair and all. As The Ringer explains, Hartnett really had a moment and this was his greatest role in said moment. He plays a fifth-year senior who purposefully repeated the grade to sell drugs which is a good thing since it is mostly his ingenuity that stops the outbreak. How does this dude not win the movie is a better question. Some examples of his coolness. He's about to fuck his English teacher, played by Famke Janssen, before she gets turned into an alien. He gets her all... intrigued with his astute comments in class and then when she catch him selling meth out of the trunk of his car he offers her some then laxatives then condoms. She weakly tells him he is being rude. Then she is all over him as an alien and lays into him and talks hella shit to him in front of the whole school. But he acts all cool and signals to her to bring it on in this cool way. I get the feeling that alien actually just wants to fuck him. Her end is pretty great with Zeke crashing his hot ass muscle car into a bus. We get some crash and burn and decapitation. Movie wasn't nearly the greatest of all time without him. Good thing they did.

Scream 4 is the greatest movie of all time

Scream 4. Probably the last one in the franchise. Scream popularized the whole "meta, self-aware, postmodern" horror genre. Basically every horror movie that came out there for a while was a total Scream clone. Basically came out and defined the genre. Literally did this in the flick even. Scream 2 came alone and did the same thing for sequels. Then with Scream 3 we sort of get that with trilogies but maybe not so convincingly. Now we get this one that attempts to do the same thing with reboots. And though it generally didn't get the best reviews, it totally works. All that negative ink is a bunch of bullshit because Scream 4 is the great movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: The franchise is showing its age, but Scream 4 is undeniably an improvement over its predecessor, with just enough meta humor and clever kills.

Pros: Wes Craven directed. His last picture. Great cast. Maybe the best of the franchise (though the first one had a pretty great one as well). Also some pretty ladies. Do a really good job of world building/character development. Though we've seen this same setup in this same time, it totally throws you for a loop with it's originality.

Cons: More brutal than the previous movies, which is quite the dubious achievement. The killers' motivations/whole murder plan is pretty bonkers.

Bad enchiladas 

You likely know the drill by this point. The gist is Sidney Prescott shows up somewhere, in this one her home town, Woodsboro, where the first movie took place, and the Ghostface killer(s) soon follow. This time it is 10 years later and the murders seem to revolve around Sid's cousin, Jill (played by it girl Emma Roberts from Scream Queens, among other things), much like they did with her back in the day. David Arquette, Neve Campbell, and Courteney Cox return as Dewey, Sid, and Gale Weathers, respectively. Gale and Dewey are married now. Women fawn over Dewey who is the sheriff now, god help us, who no longer has a limp or quite as much brain damage. Newcomers to the series include Roberts, Anthony Anderson, the lovely Alison Brie who will always be Annie from Community to me, Adam Brody, Rory Culkin, Marielle Jaffe, Erik Knudsen, Mary McDonnell, the also lovely Hayden Panettiere, Marley Shelton, Nico Tortorella, Aimee Teegarden and Britt Robertson. We also get cameos from Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin, a former Academy Award winner, as characters within the Stab universe. Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two, returns as the writer and knocks it out of the park. I would argue that this is why 1, 2, and 4 are considered solid to classic and 3 is generally considered shit. It is also the final film from horror master Wes Craven who died in 2015.

Remember that chick?

Like all the other Scream movies, the opening is significant and does most of the world building. The opening of the actual movie are the openings for Stab 6 and Stab 7 which we sort of got in Scream 2 but in this one you think this is actually the opening of the movie we, the audience, is watching. But twice we are tricked with the movie within the movie withing the movie. It is a bit confusing when you try to explain it, I realize. Basically, here the Stab flicks like Scream are also in need of a soft reboot and sort of go off the deep end. We see the Stab movies have gotten stale and turn toward the uncertain. There we get just a bunch of nobodies in 6 doing the same old shit. Then big name actresses in 7 just phoning it in in an unpredictable movie that is unpredictable because it has sort of gone stale. Hey, that is just what Scream 4 is! This explanation is all over the fucking place. You'll just have to watch it for this to make sense, I think. Anyway, we eventually get the real intro. It's Coach Taylor's daughter, Julie, from Friday Night Lights (the series) played by the actress Aimee Teegarden, and some other chick. Since this is a Scream movie, we know the semi-famous person at the beginning is going to die, horribly. And... she does (and so does the friend). First, the friend is stabbed in the stomach and arms half a dozen times before being thrown through a window and then finally hanged from a ceiling fan while Teegarden gets stabbed a shitload of times before being crushed by garage door like whatsherface in Scream and then is stabbed some more.

Alison Brie. Me-yow

Speaking of brutal deaths, this flick is full of them. Every single death is more gruesome than the most severe in the first three--probably the Drew Barrymore death. And they look fucking real, too. Some of the notables include Sid's assistant or whatever played by the lovely Alison Brie who is toyed with like the old cat and mouse thing before she is stabbed and thrown off a parking garage onto a van, the boyfriend, red herring guy who gets shot in the dick and head, and Emma Roberts's next door neighbor sort of friend, one Olivia Morris, who gets the shit stabbed out of her including a bunch of defensive wounds which they show Psycho style before she gets gutted. And a note on Psycho, that movie gets another nod with  Anthony Anderson's (from Blackish) character who is named Anthony Perkins after the actor who played Norman Bates. His death is also notable for being hilarious. For his demise, Ghostface runs up on him and stabs him in the forehead. He gets out of the car and takes some wild swings at GF that is nowhere near landing, falls to his knees and says "fuck Bruce Willis."

Dewey. Dumbfuck

The body count is a little higher in this one than the previous films. I don't think that it is a coincidence that Dewey is now the sheriff. So everyone is fucked, obviously. Some issues arise here with his incompetence, which is expected. First off, he is back with Gale/Courntey Cox who is back to looking fantastic. They are married and she has writer's block (she is the Stab author in this universe). But once the murders start back up, she is fucking in it, trying to get in as much of the action as possible. But Dewey fucking denies her, saying she isn't a cop and can't be on the scene or whatever. She says shit like "I wrote the book on this," which is a killer line, but she still gets denied. Part of this I'm sure has to do with Dewey's deputy who is a cute chick that wants to fuck that fucking hates Gale. But, you know, she legit isn't a cop and shit. That shit though doesn't fucking matter, apparently, since Dewey lets Sid lead the fucking investigation for some insane reason. It is fucking nuts. This guy is an elected official. Let that shit sink in.

A few scenes that stuck out... One, the whole Stabathon that the high school AV club hosts where Gale puts these hidden cameras all over the place. Before they have it, Gale and Sid are visiting these HS kids and they float the idea of the two of them showing up to the film fest. The two of them are like, "this is in extremely poor taste, so how about no and you not do this." The kids respond with, "lame, we doing it" and then Gale ends up coming incognito anyway. She is wearing a mask so it isn't a "hello, fellow students situation," but it is pretty close. It is like the first movie where they have the hidden cameras all over the place and they can see the killer coming after one of the main characters. In this one, they damn near get Gale (and Sid later in the movie) but of course they live on in the Screamverse. But the scene is memorably tense and drawn out with a bunch of that the-killer-is-behind-you goodness.

Ger

That shit leads to another scene that really stuck out as the main kids that are still alive, around six of them, go to the cheerleader one's house to finish the horrorfest. There, a Culkin boy, Rory, nearly makes nerd history, they say, when Hayden Panettiere, a pretty lady, comes onto him and encourages him to make a move. She is indeed a very attractive lady, and even though he is the killer, spoiler, or one of them at least, and is boning the other, spoiler (it's Emma Roberts), he still nearly does it. But he's cock blocked by the red herring, Roberts's ex Trevor, who is just sort of a dick. Plus, he's gone too far by this point. That whole shit also hearkens back to the first one as well but with some major twists that are bananas and are easily some of the best moments in the series. Their motivation, by the way, are fame and lulz, basically.

The MVP of the flick has to be Emma Roberts. This flick elevated her to scream queen status and even got her a staring role in the television series Scream Queens which I found to be pretty solid as well American Horror Story. Her final girl status in the film is pretty mind bending. A unique take that turns what the expected upside-down. The shocking reveal at the end illustrates how far people will go to become reality stars, a pretty solid social critique of the Kim Kardashian/Paris Hilton model for fame as well as our collective obsession with serial killers and mass murderers. The performance is super solid and the character totally believable.

And that was the franchise. With that I guess I should rank them... IMO it goes Scream, Scream 4, Scream 2, and Scream 3. Can't beat an instant classic in the original which completely changed horror for the next decade and saved the dying genre. Though it doesn't get the credit, Scream 4 popularized the soft reboot in ways that went beyond horror, much like the first one did with teen movies and meta, self-awareness in film. If you are going to do a soft reboot, don't just tell the same story and don't completely reimagine it either. Give the people the movie they liked but take it in unexpected places--with a mind blowing twist, basically. See Star Wars: Episode VII, Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic World, and Terminator Genisys. All follow this model. Before that, it was all hard reboots like Halloween, Spiderman, and Star Trek which just shit on everything that came before and retold the same story. Next we've got Scream 2 which sort of defined the rules for sequels. A lot like the first one, it laid out the tropes and knocked them down to make for a super solid followup. Scream 3 tries to do that same shit with trilogies but is sort of all over the place and somewhat fails as the plot makes a little less sense and the shtick gets a little old. So yeah, 1, 4, 2, 3. In that order. Guess I should go back and do Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th as well, so look forward to that.

Scream 2 is the greatest movie of all time

Scream 2. The crazy-things-are-happening-to-Sid-at-college movie. This was the first movie I can remember where I was gleaning leaked info from the internet. A movie within the movie that was based on the events from the first movie. Hearing about this, though nothing new, really, did blow my little freshman mind with anticipation. Was incredibly stoked when it finally came out and I thought was a worthy followup to the most groundbreaking horror movie released in my lifetime (though Get Out might have surpassed the original Scream on that front). In some ways I liked it better than the first film, although it is really tough to beat. Like the way Sid is a damaged character, the way Randy explains the rules for sequels, the way it is established that "brothers don't last long" in horror movies, and so forth. For these reasons I'm gonna call it... Greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: As with the first film, Scream 2 is a gleeful takedown of scary movie conventions that manages to poke fun at terrible horror sequels without falling victim to the same fate.

Pros: Seems cliche now but it did for horror sequels what the original did for horror flicks. Mixes humor and murder pretty deftly. Decent amount of wit. The movie within the movie is great shit. Pretty ladies. Cox never looks better than she does in this movie. Just about as rewatchable as the first one. Great couple of kills (especially the cops).

Cons: More or less just more of the same (not that I consider this a bad thing). A little too cheesy, maybe.

Gist is a couple years following Sid getting attacked by her boyfriend and his partner-in-crime after they killed a half dozen or so people at her high school while dressed in the now famous Ghostface mask, a copycat killer now takes up murdering people at her college. Like the original, we get all the meta genre stuff, wit, and satire as we see how the whodunit unfolds. Also directed by Wes Craven, the movie stars all the survivors Scream in David Arquette as Dewey who is just as brain damaged in this one (see the scene when he almost gets killed at the end [his downfall is stepping in pizza that is on the floor, which is just completely insane]), Neve Campbell as Sidney, Courteney Cox (who looks great in this one) as Gale Weathers, Jamie Kennedy as movie geek Randy, and Liev Schreiber as wrongly accused Cotton Weary. Short-lived newcomers to the franchise include a murderers row of '90s college aged talent in Omar Epps, Rebecca Gayheart, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joshua Jackson, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant,  Portia de Rossi (Lindsey from Arrested Development) who shows up out of nowhere to show us what a Blueth was like in college, and Jada Pinkett Smith. We also get some Laurie Metcalf (who plays Jackie in Roseanne) action as, spoiler, a news report who ends up being the mother of Billy Loomis, the murderer from the first one, who teams up with Olyphant for some sweet revenge.

The mean girls all stars 

First people of color in the franchise. Last less than a scene

Most memorable scenes from the flick include the opening, the Randy talking about movie scenes, and the dress rehearsal of the Greek tragedy "Agamemnon". The first is sort of the amuse bouche for the flick. After having no diversity in the original, here we get Epps and Jada at the "Stab" premiere which is the movie within the movie that details the events from the first flick. So right away we know that that is a thing and that people are into the story in that universe like audiences were into Scream at that same time. Which is all a little confusing. Plays within plays or movies or whatever have been around since the Renaissance dating back to before Shakespeare (although he more or less popularized it) and weren't even new to TV and movies like with "Itchy and Scratchy" in The Simpson, of course, but this movie within the movie about the first movie was pretty fucking nuts. Here we get Epps sticking his head up to a bathroom stall at the premier of "Stab" to listen to two people have sex when the killer sticks a knife through the stall door and into his head. Scary Movie sort of ruins this when they completely copy this scene with one of the Wayons bros getting a dildo to the brain instead of a knife. Jada, for her part, gets murdered in the theater with people cheering, thinking it was a part of the show or something. It is brutal. Being surrounded by all those people and no one taking your screams seriously.

As for the scene where Randy talks shit about them living in a sequel or whatever, keep in mind that while the thing that Scream does where everyone in every horror movie knows they are in a horror movie has been played to death, back in 1998 it was still new and hadn't really been done before the one came out in 1996. So, yeah, this was still defining the tropes and telling us what was to be expected in the age of self aware horror in regard to sequels. Like we saw in the previous film, Randy does this pretty much directly in two scenes. The first one he is in film theory class or something and him and Olyphant and Joshua Jackson are discussing the apparent lameness of most sequels. Randy holds the position that no sequel has ever outdone the original. People name various examples, none of which I give a shit about, where this was not the case. This is an ingenious little scene here and forces audience participation. Every time I see this movie, probably around four times at this point, I think of new examples that have popped up since my last viewing (this time Thor: Ragnarok came to mind, another previous one I thought of in the horror genre is Evil Dead II which I have to get around to soon). And we also get one of the killers talking movies, showing his hand a little bit. The second Randy-talks-movies scene is when him and Dewey are at a diner after the killings start up again. Here we get "the rules" which basically come down to more people will die in more gruesome ways. They all can't be winners, I guess. An honorable mention sort of related to horror movie rules would be when Gale's black camera man states that brothers don't live very long in horror flicks. A bit of situational irony there as he is saying this whilst bouncing out of town and thus ensuring his survival.

The last really memorable, and probably best, scene in the movie is the one where Sid is playing the role of Cassandra in the Aeschylus tragedy "Agamemnon" which is part of The Oresteia which is a trio of plays based around the Cassandra character at dress rehearsals. Early, Sid talks about how she wants to go on with the show despite all these murders. During the rehearsal, the chorus chases her about with fake daggers wearing cloaks and masks. Here we see Ghostface among the chorus, which may or may not have been real, slashing at her and weaving in and out with the other actors. It is all chaos and Sid freaks out. I like to think this wasn't Mickey, who was nearby and is later revealed as one of the killers, the experience is just too much.

But none of those were the truly best scene in the movie. That is hands down when Jerry O'Connel's character sings "I Think I Love You" by The Partridge Family at the top of his lungs to Sid in the school cafeteria. It was super sweet and totally impressive. Apparently the role was between O'Connell and some other guy and O'Connell nailing this scene is what got him the part. If he would have survived, he almost certainly would have won the movie. Check it out...

Best kill of the movie was the cop on the hood of the car. Here, Sid and her soon to be dead friend Hallie get picked up by the cops on Sid's protection detail. While they are stopped at a light, Hallie, who is pretty terrible, is like "uh, where we going?" The cops just say a bunch of stupid shit like "if we tell ya, we'd have to kill ya," and "don't ask; don't tell" which, you know, maybe pay attention instead of making the worst dad jokes of all time and shit. Of course Ghostface pops up here and stabs the driver in the throat. The other gets out, gets kicked in the face, and ends up on the hood with Ghostface driving like a wild man. He eventually rams it into a construction zone, plowing into a dumpster full of metal pipes. One of these ends up through the guys head in super gnarly death. The girls then have to climb over Ghostface, who is passed out from the wreck, to get out of the car. It's a pretty shit situation to be in.

It is tough to say who won this one but in the end I'm going with Gale. No longer hated, her and Sid end as sort of friends. She gets the scoop, kind of falls in love (again), survives getting shot, and kills a rival that isn't even on her level. Plus she is looking fierce in this installment. In 3 she has this weird bang thing going on that I'm not crazy about but here she is perfect looking. And is just totally a badass. Winner. This chick.

So that was Scream 2. I sort of like this watching and writing about an entire franchise and am probably going to do that with all the big ones. So, yeah, look forward to seeing some shit on 3 and 4 here before too long. Also some shit on Sleepaway Camp and Texas Chainsaw as well, assuming I get them done before the fall. Then I'll be doing the rest of the Halloween franchise.

Scream is the greatest movie of all time

Scream. Total game changing horror movie. When this came out I lost my mind. I was in eighth grade and I remember everyone sort of placing themselves in the various roles and where they fit in and stuff. I was an obvious Matthew Lillard although I have probably grown into more of a Randy. So yeah, not only did it start a horror renaissance but every high school movie ever rode it's coattails and was made from 1996-2001. Catapulted Courtney Cox into super stardom for a little bit. Established Wes Craven as a genius and gave us two of my favorite scenes of all time. Greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Horror icon Wes Craven's subversive deconstruction of the genre is sly, witty, and surprisingly effective as a slasher film itself, even if it's a little too cheeky for some.

One of the great THO scenes of all time

Pros: The opening is one of the greats of all time. Ditto on the rules scene. One of the greatest meta films ever which really popularized the literary device in cinema (especially with horror). Matthew Lillard (Stuart) really goes for it. Most of the performances are just over-the-top enough to make the film awesome instead of annoying. Lots of pretty ladies. Rose McGowan has never been cuter, a very cute girl, than at that moment.

Cons: Some of the plot is a little ludicrous. Like, I don't think the whole Billy Loomis/Stuart game plan at the end to get away with murder, spoiler, is going to hold up once the crime lab shows up and sees they are covered in corn syrup. I'm pretty sure Dewey is making fun of people with brain damage.

Gist of the movie: A masked killer, Ghostface, terrorizes the town of Woodsboro, California, with a serious of pretty fucking heinous murders that reference horror films. High school senior Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, and her friends become the focus of the killer(s)'s "game". Directed by Wes Craven, the film stars David Arquette, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy, Cox, McGowan, and Skeet Ulrich who was briefly the next Johnny Depp. Linda Blair (from The Exorcist), Liev Schreiber, and Henry Winkler are also sort of in the movie in mostly cameos. Can't stress how groundbreaking this felt at the time. A darkly comedic satire of shitty horror tropes that had dominated the genre for half a dozen years prior. It was the only horror film that was aware of other horror films. It was fresh AF and I fucking lost my shit over it.

Shit that sticks out... Gotta start with that opening scene. So much to love here. First, Drew Barrymore, probably the biggest star in the movie at the time, gets offed in a super violent and grotesque way. Psycho did this before when they killed off Janet Leigh but there weren't a lot of other people in that film. When you buy your ticket for this, you know you have this ensemble cast so the message is that anyone can die in this flick. And it's a super long and brutal scene. The killer toys with her and the audience, calling and asking her questions about horror films that her life depends on. Like the whole who was the killer in Friday the 13th question. Barrymore screams "Jason" which is incorrect. It was his mother that did the killing in the first one. I feel that most people, unless they were obsessives like Randy, Stuart (Lillard), or Billy, would probably get that wrong. Then, once she is finally done for and her parents get home, her mom picks up the phone to call the police and they can hear their daughter's gurgling sounds and kindly says something like "sweetie, baby?" The way I interpret this is that she knows her daughter is not long for the world and she just wanted to provide her with some kindness in her last moments. Fucked. But then the husband sends the wife off to the neighbors to call the police and there is their girl, hanging from a tree. This was thankfully not as brutal as it was supposed to be. Barrymore originally was gutted and her entrails were all spilling out and stuff but it earned the movie an NC-17 from the ratings board and they took it out.

Brutal

One nitpicky thing, the computer/technology stuff does not hold up so well. Computers, according to movies in 1996, were magic. Like how Sid calls 9-1-1 via text (this after she rips dumb horror chicks for running up the stairs instead of out the front door and then does just that) which maybe you could do but who would. Also when Dewey, the least likely person ever in the history of film to be remotely computer literate, sees that Sid's dad never registered at the hotel he was supposed to stay at with a quick Google search.

Another nitpick, no way in hell Billy/Stuart could have possibly thought they were getting away with this. They are blaming Sid's dad--why the hell is he doing this?--who they have bound in Stuart's basement for multiple days. Ligature marks, anyone? Plus they are covered in physical evidence and one of them has fake blood all over himself. But sure, you'll get away with it. Not like you weren't already shady as shit and on the cops' radar since the first murder.

"It was du-umb"

Something of note is what a surprisingly sensitive lover Skeet is despite his hatred of Sid because of her mother cheating with his dad (talk about misplaced anger) and being a vicious murderer and all. This is quite the long con. Also, their motives are suspect as hell. Just throwing that out there. Anyway, this, I feel, is why Sid didn't really ask too many questions the Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy run up on her saying that the other one is the killer. She locks them out, must have been a pretty awkward conversation for those two, and Billy shows up after seemingly just being killed. Covered in corn syrup, Sid gives him the gun even though he was obviously the killer. Well, they had just gone to bone town and Billy was like shockingly sweet. He would try to kill her in like less than an hour but not before sharing an extremely tender moment.

The breakout star of this film, the guy who won the movie basically, something I'm awarding to movies from here on out, was Randy. Three of the best scenes in the movie were the result of this dude. The one that is most amaze balls is the one where Jamie Kennedy goes over the rules for surviving a horror. Namely don't drink or do drugs, don't have sex, and don't say you'll "be right back. Just another great meta moment which popularized horror movies being aware of other horror movies (though Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Waxworks, and several other movies did it before). The scene in the video store where Randy screams "everyone is a suspect!" is up there as well for all of the same reasons. It is basically the same scene in a different location. One of my favorite scenes this time around featuring this dude that I never really gave much time before was when Courtney Cox attacks him with her giant 1980s cell phone. This is just after she finds blood everywhere in her van and is super on edge when Randy just wanders up and is like, "hey, Gale, where is" and smack. She then takes off in the van when her dead camera guy falls off the top. Sid tries to stop her and it just freaks her out more and she veers off the road and crashes into a tree. Meanwhile Randy, who doesn't know anything is going on still, has just been attacked by a news celebrity for what seems like no reason. This would be like Nancy Grace beating with a Blackberry or something.

Randy's wet dream

So, yeah, greatest movie of all time. Having finally worked my way through all the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies (though I'm still working on my piece for Freddy vs. Jason) I am probably going to revisit all the Scream flicks which I was obsessed with as an early internet user. I remember getting online via dialup and reading about leaked info for the sequel which is basically wacky stuff happening Sid at the sorority movie. So look forward to that.