Horror Lamb

Spoilers ahead.
Scream 2022 is the first film in the franchise not directed by Wes Craven after he died back in 2015. It is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Kevin Williamson returned as an executive producer, and is credited as a writer, along with James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick.
Let’s see how the reboot I won’t be calling it a requel lives up.

It is set 25 years after the original, and is centered around a whole new cast, We have Sam Carpenter and her boyfriend Ritchie, Sam’s sister Tara and her group of friends, Amber, Wes Hicks, Olivia as well as Mindy and Chad Meeks, our sweet Randy’s niece and nephew.

It starts with Tara home alone, when she gets the iconic “what’s your favourite scary movie” phone call.
They chat for a while, we get a bit of Stab trivia, reminding us who the originals were and then Tara is pretty brutally attacked by our new Ghostface, but survives. This is the first time we don’t get a cold open kill. After hearing of Tara’s attack, Sam her estranged sister returns to Woodsboro with her boyfriend.

We get a reunion in the hospital room, where everyone is excited to see Sam, except for Amber, who is still mad at Sam for leaving Tara.
We get our first kill shortly after at a bar, the victim isn’t really important but he is killed to the sound of Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which is such a staple song for this franchise, it was nice that they bought it back.

Back at the hospital, we see Sam has Hallucinations of Billy who tells her to stop trying to hide who she is, she then gets a menacing phone call from Ghostface and is attacked, she runs into our new deputy, and then we get to see our Sherriff, Judy Hicks. Sadly, not Dewey. Sam now tells Tara the reason she left town, was because she found out that their dad, wasn’t her dad. Billy and their mum had an affair in high school and Sam is the result of that affair. They have a big fight and Sam leaves, only to find her boyfriend had been listening at the door and now also knows who her father is. Sam decides the best course of action is to go and talk to the only survivor of the original massacre still living in Woodsboro.

Dewey is a bit of a drunk, living in a trailer watching Gale Weathers as a news Anchor on Good Morning America, sometime between Scream 4 and now they have separated.
Sam pleads with Dewey for help, he agrees to talk to them, and instantly accuses Ritchie as being the killer. Dewey also tells us the rules to surviving a Stab movie.
1. Never trust the love interest.
2. The killers motive is always connected to something in the past.
3. The first victim always has a friend group that the killer is a part of.
After they leave, Dewey calls Sidney who has two kids and is happily married to Mark Kincaid, the detective from Scream 3. Dewey tells her that Ghostface is back and under no circumstances is Sidney to return to Woodsboro. He also sends Gale a very awkward text message letting her know.

After some reflection, Dewey decides to help Sam and Ritchie try and find out who the killer is. The friend group gathers at Mindy and Chads house where we get to see Heather Matarazzo reprise her role as Martha.
Sam tells everyone that Billy is her father and one of them is the killer.
Mindy now tells us we are in a requel, not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel. Her little speech here, hit home a little too hard for me, whilst I didn’t love this movie when it first came out, it did make me realize how much I love this franchise as a whole. I went and got a Ghostface tattoo not long after seeing this movie.

45 minutes and it is finally time for a main cast kill.
Sherriff Judy gets a phone call from our Ghostface who threatens to kill her son Wes, who is at home in the shower. She rushes back to the house, but runs straight into Ghostface who kills her on her front porch, in broad daylight.

Our killer then heads inside and kills Wes.

Gale Weathers returns to Woodsboro and reunites with Dewey, where we get a very touching moment between the two, who still clearly love each other. While all the police are at Sherriff Judy’s house Same realizes no one is guarding Tara at the hospital, so Sam and Dewey go to check on her. Tara is in deed in trouble, the one police officer left guarding her in the hospital is dead, and his gun is missing. Ritchie gets to the hospital before Sam and is knocked out by Ghostface.
Ghostface calls Sam and tries to make her choose who to save, Tara or Ritchie. Dewey and Sam arrive just in time and save them both. But then the most devastating thing since Randy was killed in Scream 2 happens.

Dewey is killed. Gale is devastated. Sidney comes back to Woodsboro to comfort her and end this for good. Tara, Sam and Ritchie decide to leave Woodsboro, Sidney tells them that running doesn’t work and that they should work together to kill the new killer. They don’t listen and leave anyway. Sidney however has put a tracker on their car.

In the car, Tara realizes she doesn’t have her inhaler, but she has a spare one at Ambers house, they decide to stop there to grab it, where naturally she is having a memorial party for Wes. It is here we start to rule out some suspects. It’s not Chad, he is attacked by Ghostface, and not a cute little shoulder wound, properly attacked and left for dead. Sam, Tara and Ritchie arrive at the house, and Amber kicks everyone else out.

Sidney checks on the tracker and calls Sam to tell her to get the fuck out of that house. She is in Stu Macher’s house, where the climax of the first movie was.
Mindy also isn’t our killer, Sam saves her from Ghostface.
Everyone that is left now gathers in the living room. Amber was with Tara, Olivia claims she was outside, and Ritchie was in the basement getting beer. Someone in this room is our killer.

Amber pulls a gun and kills Olivia.

Gale and Sidney arrive, both with guns, Amber meets them outside and shoots Gale in the gut, Poor Gale can’t catch a break with the gut wounds. Sidney goes in the house just wasting ammo, shooting through doors before opening them. Sidney finds Ritchie hiding in a closet after shooting him in the leg through the door, she is attacked by Ghostface and they go over the railing, Sam comes running in and grabs Sidney’s gun then Ritchie stabs her.
So we have our two killers. Amber and Ritchie, but what’s their motive?
The Stab franchise, nobody has made a good Stab movie since the first, the franchise sucks now and nobody takes the true fans seriously, and since Hollywood is out of ideas, they decided to give them a new movie to make. They talk for a while, give away their plan to frame everything on Sam. Sidney gets a knife to the gut, Tara attacks Amber, Sam attacks Ritchie. Sidney and Gale attack Amber, Gale shoots her and she falls on the stove catching on fire and dying.
Sam and Ritchie are still fighting upstairs, Sam brutally kills him.
Amber pops up for one last scare, Tara shoots her.
Police and ambulances eventually show up and we see the Meek twins have both survived and the movie ends with a familiar scene of Police, Ambulances and Reporters out the front of the Macher house.

This movie had a lot of nods to Wes Craven and the previous Scream movies.

As I said before, I didn’t particularly like this movie when it first came out, but it grows on me the more I watch it. It has roughly the same run time as all the movies before it, but it feels longer.
The first 45 minutes, don’t really feel like a Scream movie. I definitely missed that cold open kill scene. The de-aging CGI used on Billy isn’t that bad, and when you finally get to the killings, they’re pretty brutal. It is also shot beautifully, the way Ghostface looms over people is very well done. In comparison to other Reboots, this one is pretty good.