Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gilett
Written by James Vanderbilt & Guy Busick. Characters by Kevin Williamson

Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Jack Champion, Courteney Cox, Henry Czerny, Mason Gooding, Roger L Jackson, Liana Liberato, Dermot Mulroney, Devyn Nekoda, Jenna Ortega, Hayden Panettiere, Tony Revolori, Josh Segarra, Skeet Ulrich, Samara Weaving.

A year after the events of the most recent Woodsborough massacre, Tara (Ortega) has moved to New York to attend college, with twins Chad and Mindy (Gooding and Brown). Living with her is big sister Samantha (Barrera), who is having a hard time coping with what happened, and is trying to keep little sister safe.

When a series of new Ghostface killings start occurring, the killer/s are leaving the masks from past killers at the scene of every attack, along with the DNA from the previous killers too. Soon a seasoned Detective (Mulroney), the dad to the sisters room-mate is heading up the investigation; and the FBI agent who is assisting is none other than Kirby Reed (Panettiere). As the body count rises, and the suspect list grows smaller, the sisters are unsure who to trust, in this sequel to the “requel”.

Not a bad entry into the saga, and the film subverts expectations within the first five minutes of the film – as a matter of fact this could possibly have the most intriguing openings to the franchise.

The character development feels improved in some aspects, especially that of the ‘core four’ – I was not the biggest fan of the character of Samantha in the first movie – but this time I found her more sympathetic and enjoyed her character growth. The character of Tara also feels improved and gets more to do this time around.

The long time legacy crew is mostly gone now, with Dewey leaving in Scream 22 and Sidney sitting this one out due to pay disputes between Neve Campbell and Paramount. Sidney is mentioned in passing, and her absence to be honest is not missed. Not being disrespectful to Campbell (I’m always going to be an OG fan, but the film was so busy that if she had been part of the narrative, I do not know where she would have been part. Gale is the only original member of this team left here, and her narrative was somewhat disappointing. She did however have one of the greatest moments with Ghostface in the franchise history, which had my heart palpitating so much I thought it would come out of my chest!

This is the most brutally violent film in the franchise, with the gore level amped up to the nth degree. I do feel that the Radio Silence Team were the right team to take on the Scream saga in the last few years.

The climax was the most unique in the franchise history too, but it did feel like the writers were skimming all the online threads about what the fanbase was hoping for in a Scream movie. Once again as the third act was approaching, I had no idea who the killer/s were going to be, and I did enjoy the reveal.

One real issue I did have, and I will try to remain as spoiler free in this – is the realism of the survival. The film felt too safe, and it was almost as if the writers and directors were too scared to make “creative choices” when it came to some characters.

Where this sits on my list of Worst to Best in the saga, it falls a little towards the bottom. Not to say this is a bad film, far from it. It was actually quite a good film – a little long, and could have had some pacing issues – but other films in the franchise are better (Scream 96, Scream 2 and Scream 22). This sits above Scream 3 and 4.

Here’s hoping for a Scream 7 and seeing what the team at Radio Silence have next

4/5