‘Scream’ is the Ultimate Comfort Horror Franchise
Scream is the perennial comfort horror movie. It might seem at odds with the movie’s content—content that mandated the Santa Rosa High School administration prohibited Scream from filming there. But there’s something about two homicidal high school boys and dead Drew Barrymore that unites and binds. Beneath the viscera, meta-commentary, and of-the-moment hairstyles is something considerably more profound and sacred. As Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) outlines in Scream (2022), the now-zeitgeist “requel” to the original, this series means an innumerable amount to an innumerable amount of people. It isn’t just a slasher series abounding with wit and a revolving door of contemporary stats; Scream is an identity all its own.
Meeks-Martin’s line is of particular importance here. In Scream (2022), a new series of slayings rock small-town Woodsboro, a clear effort on the part of the killer (or killers) to revitalize a waning franchise, known as “Stab,” Scream’s movie-within-a-movie answer to itself. With two attacks and one person dead, the new grab-bag of Woodsboro teens gathers in front of a living, cinematic monument to the late Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) to wildly lob accusations at each other. Brown’s Mindy intervenes, the conversation now fully derailed. These new slayings, she avers, aren’t operating pursuant to the rules of the original. Rather, they’re beholden to the contemporary structure of a “requel,” a franchise entry that’s neither entirely sequel nor remake. Instead, it borrows elements of both, retaining legacy cast members to tell a new story. A little of something old, a little of something new.
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In what’s likely to become the movie’s seminal scene—no different than her uncle Randy’s delineation of the rules in the original—Mindy continues. A “requel” is an executively-conceived product, an almost innately cynical ploy to satiate diehard fans while remaining accessible to new audience members. It’s not quite as jaundiced as a cash-grab, though it veers awfully close, undermining the original intent of the creators to stretch a story beyond its own means. Halloween Kills, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Candyman all qualify, and while some (um, Candyman) are considerably better than others, there’s no denying that they exist to milk a few more dollars from an existing IP.
Ostensibly so, at least, for as scathing and well-orated as Mindy’s monologue is, she misses a core component of the “requel.” While some are reverse-engineered for profit, eschewing a franchise’s key mythology to desperately make a new story work, the form itself is neutral at worst and sacred at best. Mindy, to give credit where credit is due, acknowledges as much when she recounts “Stab” as the franchise that got raucous ten-year-olds into the horror genre. But even that delivery still carries with it a whiff of acerbity, missing the profoundly human element that comprises some (though not all) elements of fandom, and horror fandom in particular.
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To briefly recount a story I shared on Josh Korngut’s Development Hell podcast in late January, I was savagely bullied (which might sound a little dramatic, but still) for wearing briefs when, unbeknownst to me, everyone had transitioned over to boxers during the transitory stage between elementary and middle school. Apparently, I missed the memo. After the first day of sixth grade, and after recounting the story to my mom, she took me to the local Blockbuster and let me rent Scream 3. It was the only entry in the series I hadn’t seen at that point. It was a deeply meaningful moment, one that genuinely assuaged my anxieties so much so that, by the following morning, I’d forgotten all about the brief incident.
Countless Scream fans have similar stories, and many—if not all—have stories that transcend the franchise and encompass the horror genre writ large. No matter one’s thought on David Gordon Green’s rebooted Halloween trilogy, few things can match the sheer joy I had finally having the chance to see Laurie Strode and Michael Myers face off in a theater with my mom, the person responsible for introducing me to the franchise in the first place. Even the non-franchise entries solidify relationships. They’re moments in time that at first appear incidental but slowly and gradually reveal themselves to be much, much more.
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The “requel” then is more than a remunerative approach to franchise filmmaking– it’s a community event. It’s an opportunity for every single fan to get together and observe a definitive part of their identity; an identity that isn’t simply Scream, but “Scream because it’s the movie I shared with my mom, dad, brother, sister, friends, or partner.” Sure, that identity is easily corrupted—and 2022 Scream has a great deal to say about that, believe me—but in its purest form, it highlights what cinema has always been designed to do. It’s a technical art form, a visual medium abounding with craft. The narratology of it all, though, remains the same as any other medium. From within the narratology, there is shared meaning. Strength through adversity, overcoming odds, and opportunities to kill the monster under the bed.
There are countless reasons why, for so many people, the Scream franchise is it. It’s funny, scary, accessible, and rendered even stronger as one’s knowledge of horror history and trends expand. Better still, it’s uniquely equipped to be sequelized, in large part because, well, the killers—though they don the same costume—are never the same. There’s no need for accidental beheadings or graveyard resurrections here, just a new face under the same old mask. Scream means more to me than most horror entries, but not simply because of what they are. They matter because of the people I’ve been able to scream alongside.
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