Scream? Don't make me laugh

Skanky Vamp

Sniffin' the Slayer
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Black Thorn
The new Scream movie, aka Scream 5 is just called Scream. The travesty doesn't stop there because according to the writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, Scream reflects how the horror genres narrative has evolved. And they said that Jordan Peele is as much as an influence for the Scream movie as Wes Craven, as they "studied Peele’s body of work, both visually and narratively, as part of their attempt to make sure this fifth film in the Scream franchise wasn’t stuck in the past."

Couple that with the fact they have already announced that they will not be using the familiar "ghostface" mask and have a new design and I have quickly soured on the idea of this movie. You don't have to change the "narrative" to match what Peele does, there is nothing wrong being "stuck in the past" and I posit that's a selling point for the films. And you don't change the iconic image of the movies. (was bad enough they did that for the TV show).

This doesn't sound like Scream to me. But... we'll see.
 
Ah, so Generic Slasher Movie with Scream paint job, only without the actual paint job beyond stealing the name. What will those in marketing think of next?
 
I used to work with a colleague who had a PhD in physics and an MBA, so he knew science and how to sell it. His favourite saying was, "If you can't fix it, feature it." How would he advertise the movie?

See Scream, the latest and most evolved but not yet woke version of the Scream franchise with Jordan Peele imagery and an all-new ghostface!

Naw, let's face it, this looks like a parody of itself, more like a follow-on to the I Know What You Did Last Summer / I Still Know What You Did Last Summer / I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer trilogy but there already is another movie of this franchise that was intended for release in 2020. Maybe 2020 did us a favour after all.
 
So many things wrong with this information I don't even know where to begin as a Scream fan.

It doesn't sound like a generic slasher, but more like a woke reinvention of the franchise the way Peele's equally cringeworthy Twilight Zone destroyed the franchise. Then again, Twilight Zone and Rod Serling have always been moral-pandering, so at least that gets somewhat of a free pass.

But the first Scream represented something of a much more different reinvention of the slasher genre. It wasn't really reexamining the moral values that might have been "stuck in the much" so much as it was trying to be clever in subverting unrealistic clichés in slasher films like not running out the front door when there's a killer. It's not exactly a scholar giving a thesis on the misogyny of slasher films so much as being a pretentious kid trying to show how clever he is by pointing out how stupid fictional movies are. So no, it's not like what you're doing, Peele. Far from it.

For a true deconstruction of fiction conventions, I actually finished watching an anime a month ago, Revolutionary Girl Utena, that showed how unrealistic idealization of princes and fairy tale motifs seen in Disney animated movies can be emotionally unhealthy. That is a true deconstruction, and thankfully, it's far removed from the toxic fourth-wave feminism that Jordan Peele and many #MeToo movement members are involved with (with the anime being more in-line with the saner third wave feminism like Buffy).

What Peele and many feminists of this generation are doing today, I wouldn't call it deconstruction or a proper postmodernist reexamination of dated values; it's just gender politics, plain and simple, the whole "us vs. them" mentality pitting men against women, and I for one am not interested in politics in any form. You can do whatever you like, just don't expect me to play ball and pay for your movies.

Ever since Scream 3, I've stopped caring that much about the franchise, such that when Scream 4 came out, I just shrugged and couldn't care less. Cabin in the Woods is more fun and subversive with the horror genre than Scream ever was anyway. Even the first Scream still incorporate the eye-rolling clichés of the genre. That said, outside of Cabin in the Woods, I don't think postmodernist movies like Scream could work anymore post 2010s. It was interesting for a while when both James Bond and Batman were deconstructed so that they're "not stuck in the past" and were given more realistic moral values, but nowadays, filmmakers like Zack Snyder mistook deconstruction for "darker and edgier." While most deconstruction falls into a more grim and even dour territory, not all deconstruction are darker and edgier. For more into:


For a true slasher deconstruction that actually replaced Scream in the 2010s, see You're Next, where the serial killers actually have a real motive for killing (not just random senseless violence). They also screw up a lot, unlike the invincible serial killers of slasher films.
 
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Didn't they learn anything from The Thing (2011)? 🙄
 
Want a film that's going to make you scream, don't think of them slasher films, how about a political thriller 'cos that'll make you scream?
 
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