“Scream,” the lively new meta slasher thriller, is neither a reboot nor a sequel to “Scream,” the landmark 1996 meta slasher thriller it shares a title with. The new movie i…
are back, and not just in token roles.) The young characters in the original “Scream” were living out their own schlock horror movie, complete with a masked killer who was like a mascot of death , and they drew on the rules they’d absorbed from their endless watching of slasher films: how you get fooled into thinking the killer isperson, the telltale actions that lead to your being slaughtered, and so on.
The original “Scream” came out 26 years ago, and you could say that it was pitched to the VCR generation, or maybe the Cinemax generation — that is, the first moviegoers who’d grown up ingesting schlock horror sequels like M&Ms, deconstructing their formulas and mechanisms, reveling in the rules those films created through sheer repetition.
The new “Scream” may be the first horror movie that turns the mockery of fan service into its own fan service. Is it fun? Mostly, yes. Surprising? It keeps faking you out about who the killer is, and playing that guessing game is part of the film’s suspense, but it’s a suspense based on the fact that the film can stay one step ahead of us in a totally arbitrary way.