Dog’s Movie House: “Scream” A Worthy, If Somewhat Overly Clever, Edition To The Classic Horror Franchise!

“Scream” takes place twenty-five years after the events of the original film and a new Ghostface killer has emerged to take on some of the teenage residents of Woodsboro. The killings revolve around young Samantha Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and her younger sister Tara (Jenna Ortega). After Tara survives an attack at the opening of the film, Sam and her boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) come to Woodsboro to figure out what’s going on. Sam is also hiding a secret that explains some of the goings on, but I won’t spoil that here. Tara’s friends, such as the brother/sister duo Mindy and Chad (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding) are all related to past victims of the original Ghostface Killer and it’s up to Sam to find out the killer’s identity before he (or she) strikes again. To do that, Sam enlists the help of the survivors of the original film: Officer Dewey (David Arquette), now a crippled retiree, Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and a tougher Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell). It soon becomes an all-out war to bring Ghostface down before he completes his latest kill spree.

While the plot mechanics are similar to the other Scream films, this one has a ball updating the rules of horror films in order to make fun of them. For example, “Scream” has a good deal of fun (especially in the opening sequence) of poking fun at so-called “elevated horror,” which includes a trend toward more artistically inclined scary films like “It Follows” or “The Witch.” It also addresses the need for franchises (horror and otherwise) to perform soft reboots reuniting the new cast with the “legacy” cast in order to find the sweet spot between something new and something familiar. (Which is what “Scream” is doing here, heh). Horror fans past and present are probably going to eat this stuff up and go back for seconds.

The acting is pretty good here, with Barrera providing the heavy lifting as Sam and proving that her showing in “In The Heights” was no fluke. The young cast holds up well, particularly Quaid as the caring boyfriend and Savoy Brown as the know-it-all horror fan who is the logical inheritor of the role played by Jaime Kennedy in the original. (Kennedy’s character just so happens to be the uncle of Mindy and Chad, giving the film a bit of synergy with the others.) It’s Mindy who coins the term “requel” which is a soft reboot/sequel hybrid that’s sure to make its way into the pop culture lexicon with startling speed. (Yay for new words!)

As for the legacy characters, most of them don’t really show up until the back half of the film, although Arquette’s Dewey has a meatier role than the others. He’s the first to get in on the action and his arc is probably the most complete of the trio. Arquette has grown on me as a performer over the years and he sells the idea of Dewey as an exhausted and beaten man with just enough fight in him for one last roundup extremely well. Campbell and Cox have a great deal of fun in their limited screen time, but this is clearly a passing of the torch moment for the younger cast, should more Scream movies be in the future. Overall, “Scream” is a fine addition to the popular franchise, although it’ll probably end up making fun of itself even more if other sequels are in the cards. Good kills, decent performances, and some timely humor make “Scream” an entertaining horror flick worth catching at the theater. 3 1/2 Out Of 5 On Kendog’s Barkometer! So Sayeth The Kendog!

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