Series: Scream

A decade after the slasher movie fad had faded, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson rejuvenated the genre with a scary, postmodern, whodunit, teen comedy spin on the overfamiliar horror format.

The Scream franchise has always been a divisive one among horror fans, with opinions varying wildly on which installments stand out from the rest.

The 2022 film Scream — aka Scream 5, or 5cream, or Five Cream — is probably the most coherent of the Scream sequels.

Screams 1–2–3 came out in 1996-1997-2000, so Scream 4 coming out 11 years later makes it almost a reboot. Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if that was the entire premise of the film?

The Scream series hits its inevitable “diminishing returns” phase in its third installment, an obvious step down from the first two.

Everything about Scream 2 indicates a rush sequel job to the massive success of Scream, but it works, almost miraculously.

It’s 2021, so the “slasher, but meta” does not feel nearly as fresh and as clever as I’m sure it might have 25 years ago