BEFORE: I'm back, though I didn't really go anywhere - but I'm back from three days at New York Comic-Con. It was going to be FOUR days at New York Comic-Con, but I asked a co-worker to cover the booth on the last day, because I was physically beat after three, and also the fourth day was my birthday. So I gave myself the day off, because I can do that. Anything fun that was there at NYCC I basically did on the first three days, but honestly, there's not that much there for me anymore because I'm now a person in his mid-fifties, and I'm not in the target market for much of anything any more, even when I walked around the main sales floor on the convention center, I didn't see much that interested me, and I saw a lot of things that I just plain didn't understand. Like why is there a stand that sells FUDGE, and another one that sells ramen soup? What do either of those things have to do with comic books or sci-fi? What's with the giant pile of pop culture "mystery boxes", like who would buy some box without knowing exactly what's inside? Minecraft, VR, comic books I've never heard of, really I just wanted to work my booth and sell animation art & DVDs, because those are things I understand, and then go home, get some sleep and do it again.
Anyway, it's over, I survived, my boss made some money which is probably already spent because he's so far in debt, and so I'm right back where I started, wondering how long the studio can possibly stay in business if our expenses every month are larger than the money coming in. But I've lived for three years now thinking the studio will close in two months, and so far I've been wrong, still I feel that one of these days, I'm going to be right. I know from watching reality shows about restaurants that this is not a working business plan, ideally you need to take in more income than expenses, that's like Economics 101. So we'll see.
Kyle Gallner carries over from "Jennifer's Body"
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Scream 4" (Movie #3,962)
THE PLOT: 25 years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer dons the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town's deadly past.
AFTER: Yes, it was just three years ago that I watched the first four "Scream" movies, which means that technically tonight's film SHOULD be called "Scream 5", but there's that pesky marketing department working overtime again, someone thinks that people will NOT go to see a movie with a number in the title, because if they haven't seen the first four films, they're going to be completely out of the loop regarding what came before. They're not wrong, exactly, but the number in the title WOULD be helpful to distinguish this movie from the 1996 original, which has, umm, EXACTLY the same title as this one. The "Halloween" franchise kind of did the same thing, they just re-booted the story in the middle with a numberless title that was therefore the same as the first film in the franchise. It's not like people need a calculator or an abacus to keep track of the "Scream" movies, though, there were only four before, you could literally count them on one hand UNLESS you think Americans are so stupid that they're not aware this is a sequel, in which case they're kind of tricking people to come aboard the fifth film as if it's the first, which really isn't fair because of the considerable back-story knowledge required here.
AFTER: Yes, it was just three years ago that I watched the first four "Scream" movies, which means that technically tonight's film SHOULD be called "Scream 5", but there's that pesky marketing department working overtime again, someone thinks that people will NOT go to see a movie with a number in the title, because if they haven't seen the first four films, they're going to be completely out of the loop regarding what came before. They're not wrong, exactly, but the number in the title WOULD be helpful to distinguish this movie from the 1996 original, which has, umm, EXACTLY the same title as this one. The "Halloween" franchise kind of did the same thing, they just re-booted the story in the middle with a numberless title that was therefore the same as the first film in the franchise. It's not like people need a calculator or an abacus to keep track of the "Scream" movies, though, there were only four before, you could literally count them on one hand UNLESS you think Americans are so stupid that they're not aware this is a sequel, in which case they're kind of tricking people to come aboard the fifth film as if it's the first, which really isn't fair because of the considerable back-story knowledge required here.
Eh, kids today (and I can say that because I'm old now) don't even go to the movies, they just watch everything on their phones, so therefore I'm thinking this film was mis-marketed to the teens and the young viewers new to the franchise when they SHOULD have targeted the people who watched Scream 1 to 4, because those people are adults now, some of them might have pretty good incomes and some might even still go out to the movies once in a while. But no, you do you, target the youth market and see how far that gets you when people can know go to Wikipedia and see the WHOLE PLOT before the watch the film, and some of the younger generation actually PREFER spoilers, which is another thing I'll never understand. I want to watch EVERY movie as cold as possible, ideally going in knowing NOTHING about what's to come, because what is a movie without a few surprises? A very boring affair, indeed.
Now, "Scream" was the movie that broke the rules, back in the day, and it did that by letting us all know that there ARE rules to horror movies. The teens who have sex, well, they're going to die. Anyone who says "I'll be right back..."? Well, let's just say they're not coming right back. They're going to die, too. And the token black guy in an otherwise white cast? He'll be fine, just kidding, he's already dead, he just doesn't know it yet. Also the calls are coming from inside the house, the killer's standing right behind you, and also the identity of the killer is the person you least expect, unless you're expecting it to be that person because that's so unlikely, in which case it's somebody else. Right?
But after four films of pointing out all the tropes and situations common to all slasher films, the "Scream" franchise soon found it had to keep getting more outlandish about the killers' identities just to keep things fresh, and so the franchise that changed everything eventually found that it had to change, too, in order to stay relevant. Some character could be the hero of one film and then maybe the villain in the next, because wow, nobody's going to see THAT coming unless by "nobody" you mean "everybody". Twists and turns are one thing, but the "Scream" movies really took things to the next level, way back in the day. Now I can't tell if the characters are following the same pattern of living (and dying) as if they KNOW they're in a horror movie, or the filmmakers were trying to make things feel NEW again by relying on the old standards once again. As a result I now can't tell if the franchise is reverting back to those old tropes in a ground-breaking way, or if they're just falling back on what worked before because the previous film just took things a bit too far, and they went so far out that they started to come back in again.
It's hard to say if any new ground was broken here, because they brought in a whole new cast of twenty-somethings to play high-school students, but it's the SAME premise, that one (or maybe two) of them are dressing up in the Ghostface outfit and killing their classmates. (Look, if you really want to be prom king or queen, there are easier ways than killing all your competition.). This time a girl named Tara gets THE phone call from the killer, who first pretends to be somebody from her mother's therapy group, and man, he stays on the phone a good long time before revealing that he wants to play a trivia game about the "Stab" movie franchise, and if she gets an answer wrong, he kills her best friend, or more likely, that's a bluff and he's actually waiting outside, not at her friend's house.
Tara survives the attack, though, and shortly after that, her big sister Samantha (Sam) comes back to town to visit her in the hospital, and we learn that Sam is the biological daughter of Billy Loomis (from the first film) and she has visions of her father talking to her - really, I'm sure that's fine, unless her father's murderous intentions somehow got inherited. A few more teens are called on the phone and lose both movie trivia AND their lives, and then it's time to check in with the veterans from the first few films, like Dewey Riley and author Gale Weathers, to see if they can help stop the new Ghostface Killer, whoever it may be. Dewey and Gale used to be married but are now divorced (just like the actor and actress who play them) but it doesn't really matter because one has a two-picture deal and the other doesn't, if you catch my meaning.
Sidney Prescott, who was targeted by different killers in 3 out of the 4 previous movies, also comes back after going to college and working as a crisis counselor, and really, I'd imagine that after four attempts on her life maybe she wouldn't be so eager to come back to Woodsboro, but really, what do I know about it? Sidney and Gale follow the at-risk teens back to a house that just happens to be the site of the original "Scream" killings, a few years ago, which were the inspiration for the "Stab" franchise, the fictional movie-within-the-movie. It turns out that somebody new has taken on the Ghostface Killer costume and started killing people JUST so there will a new and/or better addition to the "Stab" movie series, which has become very lame and predictable over time. Look, I'm not saying the same thing happened to the "Scream" franchise, but when you point a finger at someone, you've also got three fingers pointing back at yourself, just saying.
Killing people in the name of "This will make a great book" or "This will make a great movie" doesn't really seem like a good look here. Instead of having REAL reasons to kill the other people in town that somebody hates, they instead chose to focus on quantity over quality, essentially giving the "Stab" film filmmakers more inspiration for their next film, or for Gale's next book, but this seems more than a little misguided, but I guess you have to kill a lot of people in bulk these days if you're desperate for attention. But come on, if you want there to be a better horror movie then by all means, go ahead and WRITE ONE instead of just killing a bunch of your neighbors and classmates then waiting for someone to call and turn that into a movie. There are other, easier ways to achieve this too, just I don't know, maybe go to film school and graudate with honors and then bounce around from one writing gig to another for ten years until you finally get the chance to direct - OK, yeah, I can maybe see how killing five people could be seen as something of a shortcut there.
Maybe that's the moral here, if you want a better horror movie, WRITE one, don't live one. Any questions? Me, I think there's probably a market for the idea I just had, a horror movie called "Jump Scare". It's just 90 minutes of tense moments, punctuated by horrible creatures or killers suddenly popping into view, and really, nothing else happens, because nothing else NEEDS to happen.
Also starring Neve Campbell (last seen in "Scream 4"), Courteney Cox (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop", David Arquette (last seen in "Eight Legged Freaks"), Melissa Barrera (last seen in "In the Heights"), Jack Quaid (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Mikey Madison (last seen in "Nostalgia"), Jenna Ortega (last seen in "Iron Man 3"), Dylan Minnette (last seen in "Let Me In"), Jasmin Savoy Brown (last seen in "Laggies"), Mason Gooding (last seen in "Booksmart"), Sonia Ammar, Marley Shelton (last seen in "The Last Kiss"), Skeet Ulrich (last seen in "Scream" (1998)), Chester Tam (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Reggie Conquest, Heather Matarazzo (last heard in "Wish"), Brooke Barnhill, Stephen West-Rogers (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Milli M. (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Christopher Speed, Chelsea Rebecca, James A. Janisse,
with the voices of Roger L. Jackson (last heard in "Scream 4"), Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Adam Brody (also carrying over from "Jennifer's Body"), Jamie Kennedy (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "She's All That"), Henry Winkler (last seen in "Sly") and archive footage of Scott Foley (last seen in "Scream 3"), Joshua Jackson (last seen in "Scream 2")
RATING: 3 out of 10 family connections to past victims
No comments:
Post a Comment