 The wife and I were able to get out of the house for the first time in what feels like 50 years to go see a movie. Normally, she's one that prefers to stay home and watch a movie from the comfort of her own couch or bed, so she can, you know, just fall asleep if the movie's not interesting her. But we gotta watch Scream in theaters. We gotta get out and see the new Scream, Scream 5, which is just called Scream, because that's what we do now, because it's stupid. I just want to start by laying out the groundwork of what is to come in this review. The theater we went to wasn't very full. I'd say there was maybe 40, 50 people in their tops. The movie started with a little meet and greet from some of the actors on screen. A little pre-taped welcome to the movie sort of thing with Nev Campbell and Courtney Cox, explaining to the audience that they made the right decision in going out and getting COVID to watch this film and how the real way to experience movies and their magic is on a big screen. With the crowd, with the cheering, with the laughter, with the non-stop talking from the teenagers behind us! That's right, my wife's first trip to the theater in like two years and she gets to deal with the teens. We had pre-paid assigned seats. We had nice buffers all around us and everything was going according to plan. Until Courtney Cox had to open her big, fake, stupid lips and start talking, saying how she's grateful we went out to see her in the theater. And then the teens started to walk by in their parade of douchebaggery, walk up and sit right behind us, a nice train of idiots, probably six deep. Listen, 3,000 years ago, yeah, I used to be a teenager. I get it. I was a arrogant pompous little shithead. But when it came to films, I was quiet. When it came to events where you weren't supposed to speak, where you're supposed to be respectful, I was respectful. I respected strangers enough to not ruin their moviegoing experience, or just their experience in general. The people behind me, these things, they didn't care. They have no empathy. They have no morals, no standards. It's just non-stop talking the entire goddamn film. After about 20 minutes of non-stop talking from the peanut gallery behind us, we decided these fucktards aren't worth it. We're gonna move over to the other side. Of course, as we did the walk of shame, they snickered and pointed and laughed and gested and did whatever they do, jerked each other off. I don't know. The rest of the movie, thankfully, was uninterrupted. It was a much more pleasant experience. But the first 15, 20 minutes or so, however long we was stood there, their cringe, that was unbearable. I just want you to know the mindset I had while watching this film. It wasn't the best. It could have been. Now, that said, I thought the first 20 minutes or so of this movie was really good. Some of the best cinematography of the film, some genuine tension. Yeah, it's just an updated look of the original opening scene from Scream 1. It's very been there done that, but that's the point of this whole film, which is what we're really gonna get into now. I didn't like Scream 5, but I didn't hate it either. I don't know what it is. I was indifferent. Most of the film I sat there just contemplating Hollywood, contemplating movies like this in general. All these soft reboots or sequels, as the film playfully refers to itself. Because this, much like the Matrix, Resurrections, has the same exact plot. That's right, both Matrix and Scream have the same plot. You see, the screenwriters are smarter than the audience. They know the real way to win everyone over is to win no one over. You have to poke fun at yourself, but also mock the fans and mock the critics and basically bash everyone. So that no one can really be at fault. And yet at the same time everyone's at fault for this movie coming out, how it is. Scream even points out other movies in the genre like Halloween, Jurassic World, Star Wars. They list all these movies and say, look, look at what they're doing. They're bringing back nostalgia. They're bringing back the old characters, but they're not really giving themselves a unique identity. It's ironic because Scream does that too, and Scream 5 has no unique identity. It's the same exact thing, but because it points it out, we're supposed to give them a pass. No! Why do I give you a pass for that? How about make something unique and different? Don't stick with the trend of making a sequel. Make a legitimate Scream 5. Go all in. Go nuts with it. Now, I back off the hatred a little bit because Scream's always been known for this. For poking fun of the tropes, dissecting the elements of horror that work and that don't. The cliches, the over-the-top dramatization of events. You know, people going downstairs alone, people answering the phone instead of, you know, like watching their back. These things are all pointed out, but they've been pointed out in all the Scream movies prior. So it's not telling me anything new. I'm not getting new information out of this, and I already know what Requels are. So maybe if it's a ham-fisted audience member that doesn't understand what's been going on in movies lately, this might be profound for them or kind of pleasant to me. It was just kind of, yeah, okay. You're cynical, but you're doing the same thing you're cynical about. So why didn't I outright hate this like I did the Matrix? Well, for starters, the Matrix had the bad plot, but it also had the bad action and effects and acting. Everything about that was horrible. Plus, I just hold Matrix to a much higher standard because I love the original trilogy. Scream, I kind of, I'm fine with them. I'm fine. I know people really love these films. I think they're cool. They're fun. Scream 1 and 2 are fantastic. Wasn't huge on 3. 4, I thought, kind of brought it around again. Nothing really stands on its own because we're retreading all the same basic plot points from the first film. And for some reason, they're kind of bashing the sequels, which I think most people do like. A lot of people like Scream 2 better than the original even, and I can see that. That movie's pretty awesome. So for this to kind of just dismiss those films and say like, yeah, the stab franchise sucks. Only the first one's the one people like. That's kind of not true in this case. What Scream does competently enough, though, are the other things I look for in this type of property. The kills are awesome. Some really gory, violent kills here. Knives going through mouths. And you see it like come out the backside of the jaw. It's just brutal. There is some blood and gore. We see it all over the floor when someone gets stabbed and they're like backpedaling. I eat that up. Love that. There's some genuine tension in the movie, not just from the opening, but from some other scenes in the flick. Cinematography's nice throughout. It's not groundbreaking. It's not anything amazing by any means, but it's serviceable. It's getting the job done. And it maybe helps that the night before, I just got done watching Resident Evil. Welcome to Raccoon's shitty. One of the worst horror movies. Like, just one of the worst movies I've seen full stop in a long time. So if we take that comparison, Scream 2022 is like looking at the starry night by Vincent van Gogh. Now, because nostalgia has been the hot trend as of the last few years, remaking animated Disney classics to live action, carting out all these 65, 85 year old geriatric actors having them put on their Han Solo jackets and run around. Yeah, yeah, because we love that. We love that back in the 70s and 80s. We gotta do it again. It's exactly like that. They're doing the same thing that Star Wars Force Awakens did, Halloween. The old actors are there. They're kind of involved in the scenes, but they also just disappear conveniently for big chunks of time so that the new characters can handle shit. I haven't seen the original Four Scary Movies in probably two or three years, so I'm not the most fresh when it comes to the plot points and some of the more frustrating aspects. This has some frustrating moments, though. Moments where I question if a writer has even stepped foot inside of a hospital. Because apparently to them, after hours at a hospital is basically shut down. There's no patience, there's like one inept security guard, and that's it. I'm gonna wrap this up very shortly, and then I will go into spoilers for a tiny bit. I don't have enough passion or energy to talk about Scream in any real potent way. I'll talk about some of the things that did bother me and some of the things that worked a little bit more in-depth. But for now, I would just say... It's fine. Like, this is as generous as I can be. There is some cool kills. I didn't find it scary at all, but I don't think the Scream movies are scary. I'm not sure they're meant to be scary. The twists and turns did keep me hooked from beginning to end. I wasn't bored during this. It held my attention. Overall, highly indifferent to the whole fiasco. If I didn't have Scream 5, I wouldn't lose an ounce of sleep. And that, I guess, is a problem. I don't know if it was the two hours of unbridled violence that got to me or the teen speak in the corner, but when the film ended, my wife got up to leave because she didn't want to have to deal with their shenanigans. She's like, let's go. I don't care if there's an end credit scene. I just want to get out. High schoolers scare me. They said, I get it. And as we left, I said, oh, I forgot my jacket. I'll catch up to you. I then went back to the theater to retain my garment that I intentionally left. As I slowly leaned down to grab the coat, I can hear one of the teenagers heckling me from a distance. Bet Midler style. My ear is a tingle and my body is in rage mode. As the heckling continues, I slowly rise up, revealing the concealed weapon in my pocket, which is very akin to that of the murder weapon in the film Scream we just got done watching. I then jump up onto the chair and I am in a full jump sprint as I leap from chair to chair, piggybacking off of both the seat and off people's shoulders. Whoosh, whoosh. I then do a full Drax jump into the air, whoosh, and plant the knife right into the fucking shoulder of one of these little shits. Vaah! He's in pain. Whoosh. I twist the knife, whoosh, and I take it up through the side of his face. I then grab the corner of his eye, peel back the top part, and reveal clearly no brains inside because this dipshit has nothing going on upstairs. The one girl in the group who talked the loudest because she's trying to impress all the booze, she goes, AHHHHH, WHAT THE FUCK! I look at her as I finish scalping her boy toy and I say, I'm saving you for the end, bitch. She gets up and tries to run. I flip the knife, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, hit her in the back of the skull with the handle, whoosh, she goes down so hard she breaks her nose open, blood is everywhere, ahhh, ahhh. She's crawling on the ground, trying to get back up, but she's a little disoriented from, you know, the fall. Two clown shows are on both sides of me. Dude, what's your problem? I drop an elbow to his face, ahhh, finger up the nostril, whoosh, pull the whole nose out. With Voldemort's keeled over, I just have to deal with this one. whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, I punch him three hard times into the gut. He starts throwing up involuntarily. One other asshole's in a full-bore sprint trying to get out of the room. He leapfrogs over his girlfriend and starts making his way to the door. I 90s action star saunter over to the knife on the ground and without even looking at it, I kick down hard. The knife goes up into my hand, Tom Cruise Mission Impossible 2 style, whoosh, I throw the knife like a goddamn predator. whoosh, ahhh, it sails by, clipping the side of his face, a beautiful slice right across the top of the forehead. whoosh, the knife sticks into the wall. I start to T1,000 walk faster towards him, grab him by the hair, whoosh, smash his face into the seat, what had to have been a thousand times. Nothing left of his face, not even his dental records are gonna show who this asshole was. His nose-less friend decided he wants to be a big boy, comes running at me with a bucket of popcorn. I don't know what he thinks he's gonna do with that, but as he approaches, I jump backwards towards the wall, foot-plant on the knife sticking out, and jump-flip over him. He then goes full bore into the knife handle, whoosh, as I land, I do a Jean-Claude Van Damme roundhouse kick, whoosh, driving his fat-ass gut into the handle, whoosh, howl, grab him by the back of his hoodie, whoosh, peel him off, whoosh, take the knife out of the wall, start to bro-walk over to the chick on the ground, she's only made it like five feet since we last interacted. From her point of view, all she sees are some bloody shoes step into frame. She looks up to pull up the knife. Not like this. Not like this. I guess I started to feel bad because I slowly start to lower the knife before my wrist is caught. I look up and see my wife, now right next to me, takes the knife, whoosh, and sticks it into the girl's hand. Ahh! Now pinned to the floor, she can't even remove the knife herself. With the handle sticking up out of the hand, I know there's only one way to finish this fight, so I whoosh, hit her head down so that her face drives into the bunt of this thing. As we're leaving the theater, hand in hand, I look at my wife and say, well, what'd you think of the movie? Without even breaking her eye line or her stride, she says, well, it wasn't my favorite, but I sure loved the final act. It's true. All of it. Let's talk about the spoilers. I really just wanted to talk about two things that annoyed the shit out of me. I don't even care about the fact that the main female character is related to the murder from the first movie. Fine, whatever. She's seen him. That didn't do anything for me. It didn't bother me. It didn't excite me. It was just there. I guess it was like a fun little misdirect. You know, because a lot of the time you're thinking, is she a killer? And I should point out, all the young new class actors are good. No one's annoying or bad. I mean, I guess her little sister is a little annoying, because she just gets fucked up this entire movie. She's in and out of the hospital. Her legs are getting broke. She's getting stabbed. She's getting thrown over things. I mean, I feel bad for her. But the screaming, the heavy breathing, it's a bit much. It's a bit much. But it's also understandable at the same point. What's not understandable are a couple of the hospital scenes. Specifically the first instance where Ghostface Killer slaughters a dude in the parking lot and then makes his way into the hospital without anyone noticing him. He then attacks our lead actress in the kitchen area, like a little lunch room cafe. No one's there. A big brawl happens. Tables get thrown, chairs are screaming, a knife gets stabbed into the board, and then he just disappears. I'm willing to even accept all of this implausibility. What I can't forgive is immediately following that scene, she just casually goes back into her sister's room and starts chatting with her about something completely different. No cops are guarding them. There's no, like, a manhunt. Nothing's shut down. There's no cop sirens. Like, what is happening? Someone was just killed. Another person was just attacked who is related to a person who is on their deathbed in the hospital right now. What the fuck? What's better is later there's another attack at the house. Two people are killed. One is the actor from Goosebumps. That's probably my favorite death of the movie. He's in the shower. He walks to get some food. He keeps opening and shutting doors and you're expecting Ghostface, and he shows up later, unceremoniously, honestly. But the killing is awesome. And his mom's death, the cop in the front yard was great too. But the lead characters show up to the scene of the crime, and then she says, wait, who's guarding my sister if you three cops are here? How many cops are in this town? Three, apparently, because she's super concerned that they showed up here. I just... How? And I know that's not true, because at the end of the movie we see a whole bunch of cops and ambulance workers and detectives. There's a good amount of patrol in this town. There should be, especially with considering the history. The other annoying scene also takes place at a hospital at night now where no one's working. There's just one security guard that's dead. There's no hospital staff. It doesn't seem to be any other patients. I mean, hospitals are open 24-7. You can go into a hospital and see your loved one. There's an emergency room. The doctors are still working at night. There's still a nursing staff. I don't know if the writer knew this or not. I just found the whole thing implausibly stupid. And then Richie shows up, and that was the final indicator I needed that he was, in fact, the killer. Especially after he got slashed on the arm and wasn't killed. I'm like, yep. There is one of the killers. I know there's gonna be two because there was two in the original screen and this movie doesn't have an ounce of creativity in its body. And it knows it doesn't, and points out that it doesn't. So I guess, again, we get to give it a pass. No. No. Then Dewey shows up and shoots the asshole like three times. And I was thinking, wow, we are doing something different. We're gonna unmask the villain and we'll do something new here. But no. He doesn't unmask the villain. And instead he starts to leave and is like, oh, I gotta put one in the head because this movie is a complete joke now. And as he does, he gets a phone call and then he's killed. He's killed violently. And again, it's like so frustrating to watch, but because the movie knows it's intentionally being frustrating, it's just having a, it's day with it. It's like, ha ha, look what we're doing, fans. We're killing off one of your favorites from the original. That's what we have to do. Han Solo had to die. Some of the teenagers and Halloween kills had to die. So now we're doing it because that's the playbook. But the playbook's not good. That's the problem. No one really likes this playbook that you're mocking and that you're using yourself. That's why when people were giving me a hard time about the matrix saying like, no, it's meta. It knows what it's doing. It's pointing out how you shouldn't like this movie. Yeah, good job. I don't. I want to like it though. Give me something different and unique. And don't give me the bullshit where it's, oh, fans think they want something new, but they really just want nostalgia. They just want the old cast. How do you know if you're not ballsy enough to try something different? And if you don't have the Cajones or if you don't have the expertise, the passion, the drive, the motivation, the skill set, or I don't know, the wherewithal to make something better than just another lame rehash, don't do it at all. Don't do it at all. Some of those words were redundant. I know. But I'm not a screenwriter. That's my excuse. That's my excuse. Overall, it kept my interest. I was entertained for a couple hours. I won't really think of this movie ever again. I don't really have a desire to watch it again. And we'll leave it at that. So thanks for watching the spoilers. Sorry if I didn't cover something you wanted me to. I don't have like a lot of infatuation with this franchise. I think that they're fine. The first couple are really great. And then this one doesn't need to exist, but it does. So here we are. Like the video if you had a good time. Subscribe if you haven't already. I post content every week. And hopefully I'll see you around. The credits start to roll on my slaughter at the theater. But then it goes back to another shot of the girl laying on the ground with the knife handle in her head. Johnny! Johnny! She gets up on her leg. It breaks. I'll get you, you son of a bitch. Sees the bloody knife on the ground, picks it up. I'll get you. Sequel. Nah. Requel. Join me on Patreon at patreon.com slash adamdoesmovies. Bye!