Imagine you are back in high school, and your parents are out for the night. You are relaxing and doing your own thing, making dinner, and settling down to watch a movie, and the phone, a landline, rings. Although you do not recognize the caller i.d, you pick it up anyway. It is a stranger, and they sound nice at first, so although you do not know them, you keep talking to them, but then they slip up. They admit that they know a detail about you that a stranger should not know. So now instead of having a fun conversation with a stranger, the whole situation becomes much more tense. You try to get off the phone with them and lock all the doors, but they keep calling back, so you answer again, and the threats start to become real, and they tell you, you have a chance to save yourself, you just have to answer a few trivia questions about scary movies, you like scary movies, and you feel like there is not another option, so you continue. You get the first two right, but the third one is a trick question in a sense, and you get it wrong, and now the danger is there. It is at your doors, your windows, and then it is in your house, and there is nowhere left to hide, and you try to fight, but you are not strong enough, and the fight is lost. If it is the first Scream movie, you die and get strung up by your intestines, but in the new reboot, you just get stabbed a few times and your shin broken.
Overall, the opening scene went beat for beat with the original, there were a few modern adjustments, but nothing too different. The best modern addition was using the app to lock the house, but the killer having access to the app too and unlocking the house, a new horror for an invention that is supposed to keep someone safer. Oddly enough they kept the landline, even though I cannot say that I know a person with a landline still. They also used facetime as a stalkerish tool to show the girl that Ghost Face was threatening to kill. This was not the only scene that seemed almost like an exact replica from the first, but it was the one that was redone the best. That could be because when watching the original Scream for the first time, it is one of the craziest and most tense scenes to open a movie ever.
After the opening scene, Tara, the girl that was attacked, is in the hospital, and all her friends come to visit her in the hospital, but she also gets a surprise visitor, Sam, her estranged sister, comes to visit, and she brings her boyfriend, Richie. Tara is open to bringing her sister back into her life, and they get along well. The Ghost Face attacks continue, and they go after a variety of people, and this draws back the survivors from the original movie, and these were the real targets of Ghost Face, but the killer was also after a new player as well, one whose identity was secret (not going to spoil it). There are some more bloody kills and elaborate set ups, and then they make it to the final showdown at the house party, just like in the original, and it plays out so similarly that it is laughable, which to me took away from it. There was no real suspense if you have seen the first one, it was easily predictable and uninventive.
The most original scene that worked the most was in the hospital. For some reason, they decided that it was a good idea to put Tara on a private floor of the hospital with no one else with a killer on the loose looking for her, and when a murder happens, and all the police in the town are called, this leaves her alone on a floor with a doctor. Then the power goes out, and the doctor is killed. She has to try to flee and hide with a massive boot on, a stab wound, and heavily bandaged hands from knife wounds. She painfully lowers herself into a wheelchair, and then wheels herself to the hall to try to escape, and her hands start to bleed, and every time she pulls the wheels, she is causing herself agony, and then Ghost Face is upon her, and right before Ghost Face finishes the deed, her friends come to her rescue. Ghost Face gets shot at least once, and everyone escapes, except for the guy who goes back to shoot Ghost Face in the head, and, of course, he gets killed.
There were two problems I had with the movie. One was that when Ghost Face was reveled there was no bullet wounds from this hospital scene. I am willing to suspend disbelief that a person can get shot a couple times and not die, but to not have any wound seems a little much, or at least show them wearing a Kevlar vest when they are revealed, something! The other part that was ridiculous was when the sheriff was rushing back to her house because her son was threatened, and she called for all the officers to go to her house, and she got murdered, and then it seemed like minutes later, her son finished his shower, got dressed, did some stuff in the kitchen, then he got murdered, if a police unit could not have made it anywhere near the house, where there would at least be some siren noise by the time the son was getting killed that seems insane. Two very small nitpicks, but they bugged me.
The newest Matrix and this movie were too self-aware and meta. There was literally a scene where a girl was watching a scene from the original movie, and the exact same thing was happening to her. The original Scream became famous and renown in part because of its nod to scary movie themes, and it poked fun at them while also playing into them, and this is fine, but it seemed like in this movie, they were trying even harder to play into these stereotypes, and to really point them out as much as they could, and it became too much to the point where it took away any sense of tension. The newest Halloween did some of the same things, where it brought back some of the original actors, and had similar scenes to the original, but it felt much more organic. I feel like this movie had a chance to break free from some of the norms and do something new at the end, but it fell into its own rut.
I give this Scream 2 stars, which may be a bit harsh, but besides the opening scene, which is always great, and the one scene in the hospital, there was a lack of tension. It did not make me care, and it did not scare me. In the final act I was snickering at the nods to the old movie rather than being drawn into what was happening. Yet another January movie that has let me down, I should just adjust my expectations, I guess. For some reason, this movie is receiving some acclaim, but I just do not get it.
Other movies this week:
Hotel Transylvania Transformania: The fourth installment of the Hotel Transylvania franchise, and it was not even worthy of theaters, it was released straight on to Amazon, and it was not good.
Robin Hood: One of my favorite animated Disney films growing up, I thought I would revisit and see if I still enjoyed it, and I did! It was great. Nothing better than teaching kids that rich people should share their money and be more generous, and that taxes are bad.
Best in Show: A unusual comedy that is a faux documentary about a dog show. It has some very ridiculous and eccentric characters that steal the show. Everyone has their own unique and weird relationship with their dog, and this movie does the epilogue incredibly well.
The House: A new Netflix stop motion animation that is an anthology of three different stories. They all take place centered in a house, given the title. Each one is a little unsettling in its own way, especially the first one. If you want something new and unusual to watch, I recommend watching this!
All Madden: It is great to see that Madden got to see all the nice things that people had to say about him before he passed. A touching tribute to a legend.
New Rankings:
Scream (2022): 2 Stars
Hotel Transylvania Tranformania: 2 Stars
Robin Hood: 4 Stars
Best in Show: 3.5 Stars
The House: 3.5 Stars
All Madden: 3 Stars
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