The future of Scream is in good hands
Scream appeared dead in the water for a while. The genre-defining slasher film saw three movies released in quick succession in 1996, 1997, and 2000. Unfortunately, Scream 3 wasn’t well-received at the box office, resulting in the series’ absence for most of the 2000s. Although Scream 4 was released in theaters in 2011 along with MTV’s Scream anthology series, the untimely death of Wes Craven in 2015 meant that no one was left to helm future installments. Luckily, the duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett was up for the task. After establishing themselves with 2019’s Ready or Not, the duo was confirmed to direct the fifth Scream film. Now, Matt and Tyler will finally get a chance to show off what they’ve been working on all these years. Paramount has just released a 70-second trailer that teases the film’s several suspenseful moments along with some on-the-nose references to some of the most iconic moments throughout the franchise. The final Scream 5 trailer opens with David Arquette’s Dewey Riley explaining to the movie’s fresh faces how to survive a Ghostface encounter. This is an obvious callback to the original film’s horror survival rules made up by Jamie Kennedy’s Randy. Dewey adds that “the killer is a part of something in the past”, which is another direct reference to the legacy of Ghostface. Later on in the trailer, we see Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers and Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott come back just as Ghostface starts going on a killing spree. The trailer even features Ghostface’s classic “Sidney” voice line. But, just as the trailer started to look a lot more like the past Scream films, Ghostface reminds Sidney and the viewers that this is not the same movie that they’ve seen before. The upcoming Scream movie might be making a play on the nostalgia factor but it’s also paving the way for the future of the series. This should allow the Scream reboot to appeal to older and younger audiences. Of course, only time will tell if moviegoers are going to risk watching the movie in theaters. The last two Scream films had little luck at the box office. To make matters worse, Scream is premiering just as Spider-Man: No Way Home is going strong for the nth weekend along with the ever-looming threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, if it’s any consolation, we know that Ghostface is stepping up their game, expanding their arsenal by using a flamethrower, among other things.
