Our second flick of this year's annual horror countdown was the new Scream (2022), which Mark and I watched with my bro Jesse. I generally find slashers boring, but I really love the original Scream (1996). The new iteration had some clever moments -- lots of meta humor, like moments you "know" will be jump scares, but then aren't -- but was a bust overall. For me, the original works because the pacing is perfect -- the stalking builds the suspense and makes the kills much more terrifying. In the new one, the willy-nilly killing destroys the sense of being uniquely preyed upon, being hunted, which triggers our primal terror.
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who also did the much better. Ready or Not (2019).
