The first Scream film in 1996 can arguably claim to be the first meta film about Horror films owing to its clever and original premise of having its characters be aware that they are actually experiencing the terrifying situations that occur in fictional Horror films. There is also a valid argument that even the first sequel (Scream 2) is nearly as meta as the first film was since almost all successful horror films eventually get a sequel.
But when an attempt is made to meta-size (or meta-morph maybe?) a new reboot of the original film, that doesn't make the new film twice as meta...it just makes it repetitive, lazy, and dumb, especially when nothing really clever or original is added to the new remake. Really, was ANYONE surprised when there turned out to be two killers just like in the first film? Or when the supposedly dead killer really wasn't dead but sprang back to life for a cheap shock scare only to be blasted by the heroine...which was followed, of course, by a pithy quip just like in the original?
What is really tragic and most disturbing, however, about this cruddy waste-of-time remake is not so much that it was actually made...it's that it appears some newer viewers seem to have been entertained by this pabulum. One of my favorite aphorisms has always been that "some people are starved for entertainment," even if said entertainment is just a shameless ploy to turn a quick buck by tracing over the template of an earlier success. The 2022 Scream proves this theory.
But when an attempt is made to meta-size (or meta-morph maybe?) a new reboot of the original film, that doesn't make the new film twice as meta...it just makes it repetitive, lazy, and dumb, especially when nothing really clever or original is added to the new remake. Really, was ANYONE surprised when there turned out to be two killers just like in the first film? Or when the supposedly dead killer really wasn't dead but sprang back to life for a cheap shock scare only to be blasted by the heroine...which was followed, of course, by a pithy quip just like in the original?
What is really tragic and most disturbing, however, about this cruddy waste-of-time remake is not so much that it was actually made...it's that it appears some newer viewers seem to have been entertained by this pabulum. One of my favorite aphorisms has always been that "some people are starved for entertainment," even if said entertainment is just a shameless ploy to turn a quick buck by tracing over the template of an earlier success. The 2022 Scream proves this theory.