Delayed Reaction: 892

Premise: A veteran holds up a bank to get the VA to give him the money they owe him.

 

This is the kind of movie where being based on a true story really gets in the way. There really was a veteran who held two employees at a Wells Fargo bank hostage in Georgia. All he wanted was less than $1000 that the VA owed him and refused to give him due to a clerical error. He didn’t want to rob the bank. He just wanted the attention to get the VA to act. He was very polite to the hostages and even answered the phones for customers. He had a history of mental problems since returning from Iraq and said he had a bomb when he went into the bank. Finally, he was killed in the process. Sorry if any of this is a spoiler, but 1) it’s not like the story wasn’t publicized and 2) a lot of the spoiler stuff is pretty foregrounded in the movie.

 

That’s a lot of ill-fitting pieces to fit in the movie. A lot of limitations that push up against how films are normally written. How crazy should Brian Brown-Easley (John Boyega) be? How sympathetic should he be? How can they play up the tension without making him seem like a bad guy? It’s tough, and that ultimately is the problem I have with 892. It’s not a very tense movie and actual events keep stepping on the story beats. There are no big escape attempts. The film never makes Brown-Easley feel that dangerous. It’s pretty obvious early on that he doesn’t actually have a bomb. Regardless of if you guess that, he says from the very beginning that if he lets the bomb go off, he was doing it alone, which negates the tension from having hostages.

 

It doesn’t help that I was thoroughly unimpressed with the filmmaker’s choices throughout. It’s too clear that they are on Brown-Easley’s side from the beginning. He had no menace, which defanged the whole thing. This differs from a Fruitvale Station. That move also canonized the protagonist too much, but that guy really didn’t do anything to deserve what happened to him. Brown-Easley did take people hostage and said he had a bomb. While shooting him was excessive, especially in hindsight, it’s also within the reasonable expectations of the situation he put himself in. He scarred two people with his actions, yet the movie positions it as the two employees (played by Nicole Beharie and Selenis Leyva) being scarred by the situation, not by Brown-Easley. On a visual filmmaking level, I don’t understand how Beharie and Leyva didn’t escape a half dozen times. Numerous times, he is looking away from them and the door for extended periods of time. He has a bomb, not a gun and he’s repeated that he has no intention of hurting them. The only reason they don’t escape in the movie is because they didn’t in real life. That took me out of the movie so much, and the only reason for it is poor visual filmmaking. Selenis Levya certainly works overtime to show her fear, but that’s a case of the performance trying to bail out the filmmaking.

 

Ignoring the story problems though, they did get good performances all around. John Boyega is excellent casting although it does misunderstand what he brings to this. Simply casting Boyega is going to make a character sympathetic. He lets you get away with more. Look at Detroit. His character in that, also based on a real person, kind of sucks. However, just by casting Boyega, that character can do everything wrong and the audience still wants to side with him. In 892, they treat him like he’s played by Will Poulter, who is the opposite of Boyega. He’s always somewhat menacing even if he’s being the nicest guy in the world. That said, Boyega brings exactly what he’s supposed to as a performer. He fills Brown-Easley with a ton of humanity. I was most impressed with Nicole Beharie. I know her name, but I hadn’t seen anything where she stood out this much before. Simply put, she’s a great bank manager. I love how well she plays someone keeping a calm face while being terrified on the inside. In the fictional version of this story, she would’ve been the protagonist of the movie who successfully arranges an escape and a live-capture of Brown-Easley. I’m definitely intrigued to see her in more. Selenis Leyva doesn’t get much more to do than be terrified, but she does that well. The big names in the supporting cast are Michael Kenneth Williams, Connie Britton, and Jeffrey Donovan. Nothing spectacular from any of them, but they do what’s asked of them. It’s kind of fitting that Michael Kenneth Williams’ final screen appearance would be a supporting role that he’s overqualified for.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Fresh

Premise: A woman discovers her new boyfriend has an appetite for more than she’s willing to offer.

 

The challenge with a movie like Fresh is guessing how much to say. It’s a Sundance movie, so I have no idea how it will be released. Will Fresh even stay the title. How much will the pitch of the movie give away? I know for me the thrill was seeing the movie reveal itself. I like to go into these Sundance movies knowing as little as possible. It’s the only time I get to see any movies unspoiled by any expectations. Is Fresh going to be a coming-of-age dramedy? Is it a sweet romance? Is it a nefarious toxic love story? Is it a complete misdirect into horror? I should’ve expected something, given that it was from the Midnight portion of Sundance, generally meant for horror, genre, and dark comedy. Ultimately, I’m landing on the theory that no one is getting all the way to this blog without having done some level of independent research on the movie already. So, spoiler alert, I guess.

 

30 minutes into Fresh I laughed with delight. That’s how long it took to get to the opening credits. That’s how long it took for the movie to reveal itself. I really loved that. I figured something wasn’t right about this meet-cute and fast relationship between Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, and I love that the movie took its time to confirm that. Watching this was the same thrill as watching From Dusk Till Dawn the first time. Director Mimi Cave is essentially saying “Sure, I could make this kind of movie, but I’d rather make this other kind of movie instead.” And she does both well. Those 30-minutes-in credits really worked for me too. It’s such a confidence movie. I didn’t even think about how there weren’t any credits before that. Then when I realized the credits were happening my only thought was “You earned that”.

 

That’s not to say the opening is a complete shift in tone. Early on, we see plenty of the dangers and annoyances Daisy Edgar-Jones runs into in modern dating. Sebastian Stan eventually abducting her is the worst-case scenario for all the fears she’s carrying with her from the beginning. The twist that he’s harvesting her for meat is almost treated like it’s something she was foolish not to look out for.

 

The captivity portion of the movie loses a little steam, I’ll admit. I like Sebastian Stan, but he’s not an ideal Patrick Bateman character. It feels like he’s trying to be menacing, whereas a Christian Bale just is menacing in his composure. And the revelation about his network of clients is a little uninspired. The “1 percent of the 1 percent” line lacked much insight. I don’t get the sense that the writer (Lauryn Kahn) was that interested in the question of who his clients were, so I’d rather she just left that as a mystery. I believe there would be a market for this. No need to show me them getting the packages.

 

I do love where the movie examines the psychology of his victims. That Charlotte Le Bon eventually married Stan and even helped him is fascinating. I don’t need them to get more in her head than they do, so that was perfect. And I’ve gone too long without talking about Daisy Edgar-Jones. She’s terrific throughout. I love her as someone annoyed by all the indignities of dating early on. Her dark sense of humor helps her once she’s imprisoned, especially when she’s deceiving Stan late. Between this and Normal People, she’s rapidly moving up my “actors I need to look out for who I also just like to look at” rankings.

 

I love how playful this movie is. There’s the great game of the opening. It sneaks in a delightful red herring late in the movie with the bartender investigating things. It wasn’t until a few minutes after I finished the movie that I realized he really did just drive away when he heard gunfire. Which is hilarious. This movie keeps growing on me the last few days.

 

Side Note: I think Daisy Edgar-Jones might be in that Zoey Deutch category of “Actresses who fit better with people 10 years older than her”. She is 23 and looks 23, but she makes more sense on screen as a friend of Aubrey Plaza than Kiernan Shipka. That and the fact that Sebastian Stan has a somewhat boyish face is why their 16-year age gap doesn’t read that much on screen. To me at least.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Mandy

Premise: A man gets bloody revenge on religious fanatics who killed the woman he loved.

 

I don’t think I’m ready to reclaim Nic Cage. His 80s and 90s won him a lot of fans. He’s spent most of the last 20 years tearing up his A-list status*. It feels like every year he’s coming out with a bonkers indie movie that has people saying he’s back. The Keanu Reeves comeback only intensified this.

 

*Although, he’s been more resilient than people give him credit for. It feels like he’s been in the wilderness since that Oscar win in 1995, but he was in huge movies almost every year through 2009.

 

Mandy is one of those movies that gets an inflated reputation because everyone who sees it likes it more than they expected. It makes sense too. It’s a highly stylized movie with several ludicrous set pieces that tries to weaponize Cage’s biggest instincts. That sounds exhausting as a pitch, but when you watch it, it’s wild and entertaining. For me it breaks down pretty simply. The first hour with the long artistic shots, monologuing, and inciting acts of violence I didn’t care for. It goes on way too long. The second half, when Cage gets revenge, including a chainsaw fight, is a ton of fun. Cage playing to the back row doesn’t do much for me in this mode, but he’s undeniably engaging. I sometimes forget that his Oscar win wasn’t a fluke.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Ghosts of War

Premise: WWII soldiers experience supernatural events in a German mansion they are occupying.

 

I wish this movie was less ambitious. The actual premise is enough. Not a lot of movies blend the horror and war genres even though they are a natural fit. I was relieved that they didn’t take the easy route of tying it to the Holocaust. It’s decent fun to see people who thought they were in one kind of movie turn out to be in another kind. That was enough movie for me. Then it adds that late twist about it all being a dream based on their experiences as Afghanistan war veterans. And they add the curse storyline on top of that. It all reads as a story written for the twist, and the twist isn’t that good.

 

It doesn’t help this movie that I recently finished rewatches of both Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. It made Ghosts of War’s production design look especially shoddy. Granted, they could argue that’s the point. Brenton Thwaites, Skylar Astin, and the others don’t fit in the WWII setting or look like they’ve been through hell for months because it’s all a simulation. That’s fine by the end, but it means I’m spending the first 80 minutes watching this as a lazy and unconvincing WWII production. I have a low tolerance for “it’s supposed to look bad” arguments in movies.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Quick Reaction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers

This is one of the great titles in cinema. That’s why it keeps getting remade. We know exactly what it’s about and are intrigued to know more from the title. I can’t say this version is all that special. I just really love this cast. Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright. There’s a lot of personality in this cast. And I’ve now stumbled through all of Brooke Adams’ noteworthy roles. I didn’t intend to do that. She’s good though. I’m surprised she didn’t have more of a career. Anyway, this movie has a lot of the nearly B-movie charm you’d expect and hope for.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Dog

Formula: Turner & Hootch / Stop-Loss

 

I’m not what you would call “pro-military”. I understand there’s a purpose for it. I’m glad there are other people who are soldiers so I don’t have to be. I stop well short of attributing nobility to it though. At the end of the day, it’s a job they took for some reason*. Over the years, the stance people have on military officers has gotten divisive. Some see them as the noblest of heroes. Others look at them as toxic pawns who like to shoot people. It’s gotten very tricky to bridge that gap in entertainment. It turns out, using a dog is a pretty brilliant way to do it.

 

*To be clear, I feel this about all jobs. You either do it because it’s the best choice available to you or you want to do it. I ultimately respect the person, not the job title.

 

For Channing Tatum’s debut feature film as a director (co-director technically), he has decided to talk about the struggle to reintegrate into society while still suffering from the traumas of war. He just does it with a dog. Dog is about Briggs, a former army ranger who was discharged on disability. He convinces a superior officer to re-enlist him on the condition that Briggs transports his dead friend’s service dog to his funeral 1500 miles away. The dog is a trained attack dog with a kill count, and it is a terror to deal with after leaving a warzone. The story itself is pretty silly. Technically, all the stuff you are imagining is in there. The dog keeps getting Briggs in trouble. They have several misadventures on the road trip and get into zany situations. I literally cannot describe the plot in a way that doesn’t sound like it’s a generic “action star does family movie” (see: The Pacifier, The Game Plan, My Spy, etc.). And it is a crowd-pleasing kind of movie, just not in the way you’d expect.

 

It really is a movie about coming back from the traumas of war. But, by making it a dog, audiences are way quicker to forgive. Just imagine if this was a movie about a soldier with PTSD coming back home. He explodes on people for no reason and gets violent with little provocation. He’s even a little racist. Most of the time in the movie would be spent convincing the audience that he can be redeemed. Even if you understand him, it’s hard to paint that character as a sweet guy deep down. It’s a lot easier to forgive that character if it’s a dog then hope the audience can extrapolate that it’s the same for human soldiers.

 

Thankfully, the movie also doesn’t take itself too seriously. Every intense situation is diffused pretty gently. It’s not out to make anyone the villain. It’s clear that Tatum has respect for the military. His character is desperate to enlist again so he has a feeling of purpose again. The reason he’s having trouble re-enlisting is because superior officers are concerned for his well-being. It’s revealed that they plan to put the dog down after the funeral, not because they are callous but because they are concerned that the damage done is too great. Dog does a terrific job of staying on message and not leaning too far in one direction or the other. I’m very impressed with Channing Tatum’s collaborations with screenwriter and co-director Reid Carolin, who also wrote the Magic Mike movies. They continue to find ways to explore masculinity that are thoughtful and avoid clichés. I’m thoroughly surprised that I came out of Dog so favorable about it. I really thought it was some dumb road trip buddy comedy with a dog. And I guess it is that, but in a good way.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Death on the Nile

Formula: Murder on the Orient Express + the Nile + How Jack got his tattoos

 

I’ll admit, this movie is probably cursed. Maybe Kenneth Branagh hit a gypsy enchantress with his car or stole a sacred amulet from an Aztec shrine, but some power in this world was working against Death on the Nile. We were all reasonably excited when this movie first came together. Murder on the Orient Express was a solid hit. He was putting together an impressive cast again. Then COVID happened and pushed the release date several times. It damn near holds the record for most posters with different dates listed on them, I imagine. At that point, the stars got knocked out one-by-one. Gal Gadot had the now infamous “Imagine” video*. Letitia Wright came out as an anti-vaxxer. Armie Hammer is apparently a cannibal. I think Russell Brand did something too. By the time this got to the release date, Kenneth Branagh barely had anyone to share the red carpet with. And I’m not sure if Branagh is on that red carpet. I’m pretty sure he was doing press for all the nominations his film Belfast got just a few days before. As I said, nothing is working in this movie’s favor.

 

*To be fair, it’s weird how much ridicule she’s received for that. I feel like we all did some really stupid stuff March-June 2020.

 

All that said, I enjoyed the movie. There’s not much to an Agatha Christie adaptation. Populate the film with a collection of colorful characters, put them in a remote location, and make sure there’s a murder. This time, it’s the wedding party for an heiress (Gal Gadot) and her much less wealthy but handsome new husband (Armie Hammer). The location is an expensive riverboat on the Nile they board hoping to avoid Hammer’s ex (Emma Mackie) who he dumped very recently to marry Gadot. Master detective Hercule Poirot is brought on for another job before finding himself in charge of solving a string of murders. It’s not the greatest mystery in the world. The downside to being so influential is that since all modern mysteries are built on Agatha Christie’s novels, a straight adaptation is going to feel very familiar. The actors acquit themselves well, but it never moves past feeling like I’m watching some famous people at a murder mystery party.

 

I appreciate how much Branagh treats this like his 10^th Poirot movie and not his 2^nd. He doesn’t spend a ton of time reselling the audience on Poirot. While Poirot is the lead character, he’s rarely the focus of any scene. These movies must be a lot easier for him to direct than others he’s starred in. Really, I appreciate how happy everyone was to share screen time. Death on the Nile is a waste of Annette Bening unless she wanted a nice paycheck and to play someone big and uncomplicated.

 

I do question some of the casting. I don’t think Gal Gadot was right for her role. I know a lot of people are dogging on her acting. I don’t mind that as much, simply because the fun of these movies is that everyone is supposed to be playing a character card from Clue and not a fully fleshed out person. My issue is more with some age casting. Gadot, Emma Mackey, and Letitia Wright are all supposed to be old classmates. The problem is, Gadot looks like she’s in her mid-30s. Incredibly beautiful mid-30s, but mid-30s. She also has a look (similar to Armie Hammer) where if you put her in a group of people the same age as her, she looks like the adult in the room. Then there’s Leticia Wright who is late 20s but famous for playing a Wakandan wunderkind. It’s hard to age her up onscreen. Finally, Emma Mackey is mid-20s and still very convincingly playing a high schooler in Sex Education. On screen, there is no way Gadot, Wright, and Mackey look like old school chums, even if we give a few years of leeway. Pair Gadot instead with an Anna Kendrick, Amanda Seyfried, or Keira Knightley and it’s much less distracting.

 

The thing that most impressed me about the movie was the boat set. That thing is massive and they shoot all around it. Branagh makes a meal out of showing how much of the set they can walk around in. He shows off the whole layout of it so we understand how a person could get from one location to another. And, even though it is a fixed space, it never feels limiting. There are always more rooms or decks to set a scene in. It’s way too early to be thinking about this, but I would love if this could hang onto a production design nomination a year from now.

 

Side Note: You might be asking about the “How Jack got his tattoos” portion of my formula. That’s referencing the infamous episode of LOST where the flashbacks were about how Jack got the tattoos that had never before and never would serve a plot purpose. That was the moment when the showrunners realized they needed to set an endgame. The flashbacks in each episode were getting in the way, not helping. Now, I use it as a shorthand for a show or movie answering a question no one asked. In Death on the Nile, they give Poirot’s mustache an origin story. I don’t know if that was pulled from the books. If it was, it should’ve been dropped. Poirot’s mustache is famous but it’s not a mystery. Nothing they can offer works better than “He just has a funny mustache because he does” as an explanation. It’s not a big deal in the movie that they explain it. Maybe 5 minutes of runtime wasted. It’s just so unnecessary.

 

Death on the Nile is a really strong C+. It’s perfectly entertaining. It’s doesn’t overreach. I really have to question anyone’s expectations going in if they leave it greatly disappointed. I’ll never seek the movie out again or say a person must see it. It’s more of a movie one should passively find themselves watching than seek out. Strong “11:20am on HBO on a sick day” vibes for people in my age bracket and older. I got what I wanted out of it, so I have no complaints.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Moonfall

Formula: Independence Day – charisma

 

What do you do when you have a Woody Allen-esque compulsion to keep making movies but your movies can’t be made on a Woody Allen budget? That’s the question for this phase of Rolland Emmerich’s career. He made his name on big budget disaster movies. Many of them I really like (Independence Day, The Patriot). Others I enjoy for what they are (White House Down, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012). Moonfall looks like it might be a breaking point for him. It’s a $140 million movie that probably needed $200 million to do it right and has the cast of a $40 million movie.

 

You know the drill as far as the plot goes. It’s the end of the world. This time, it’s the moon going off course because of alien technology. Patrick Wilson is a disgraced astronaut who is the only one with the skills to stop the moon from colliding with Earth. Halle Berry plays the director of NASA and former friend of Wilson’s who is the only one in the agency who hasn’t given up. John Bradley is an amateur astrophysicist who was the first one to predict that aliens controlled the moon. There are a bunch of other satellite family members who you’ll recognize as types from any Emmerich movie. You may notice that I just breezed by the fact that aliens control the moon. The movie does that too. It turns out, there’s no easy way to write about the moon colliding with Earth in a way that can be stopped, so they have to make a lot of leaps to make it work.

 

While there are bits of movies like Contact in this, the best comparison for Moonfall is Independence Day, which is a terribly cheesy movie that I would die for. There are a few things that ID4 has and Moonfall doesn’t that makes all the difference. The first is the cast balance. ID4 is perfect in this regard. Will Smith brings the charisma. Jeff Goldblum is the straight man, but because he’s Goldblum, he can’t help but bring eccentricity to it. Judd Hirsch is there commenting on how crazy all of it is. Bill Pullman plays everything straight and with incredible conviction. There’s no way his speech should work at the end, but it does. You even have Randy Quaid for laughs until he becomes the emotional core of the movie.

 

Moonfall doesn’t have that. It has Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry both filling the straight man role. Each tamps down their charisma. John Bradley seems like he’d be the joke guy, but he’s really not. So, you have the three heroes all filling the same role. No one is having fun with anything. No one is commenting on how nuts it all is. No one is bad. They just have no variety.

 

Second, there’s too much disaster going on. ID4 is built around two big set pieces. There’s the destruction of the White House (and other locations) in that famous scene and there’s the big fight at the end. These are huge scenes that work in contrast with the tension building the rest of the time. Moonfall gets big and stays big. The streets of Los Angeles are flooded by the rising tides. Pieces of the Moon are crashing to Earth. Gravity is going in and out. Because it’s so big and so much, Emmerich has to rely on a lot of special effects, and they don’t all look great. A lot of this movie looks fake. Even stuff that I’m pretty sure was real. Like, it uses the Griffith Observatory as a location. I assume they filmed on location, but there are times when it still looks like they green screened it. Instead of using the budget to make a couple scenes look great, they opt to make a bunch of scenes look OK. Not a great trade off.

 

The consensus on Moonfall is that it’s fun but it could’ve been a lot more fun. I can’t disagree on this one. It has a few decent moments. The occasional humor is happy to settle for groaners, which would play better if this was overall a cheesier movie. The cast feels like a poorly constructed roster. Played by a bunch of A-listers, they probably could’ve made those characters work. With the actors they got, they should’ve found more ways to play to their strengths or cast a little more for fit than best available. This movie is way more Geostorm than ID4, which isn’t a dealbreaker depending on what you are looking for.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

 

After the Credits

OK. That last scene. Please don’t tell me they were angling for a sequel. It’s hard to think of a movie better set up for a definitive ending. It’s only going to get worse the more we know about the aliens. The world is so totally fucked that a sequel would have to take place a decade later to even pretend that infrastructure is back. In a world where the gambit of this movie did work and it was a box office hit, no one wants to leave it thinking “I can’t wait for the next time the Moon falls!”

Movie Reaction: The 355

Formula: Charlie’s Angels – Charlie

 

It’s easy to see the appeal of The 355. It takes a bunch of great and popular actresses (two Oscar winners, one more eventual Oscar winner, one of China’s biggest stars) who have all dabbled in action movies and puts them in a spy movie co-written and directed by the writer of numerous blockbusters over the last decade+. It’s one of those movies I was going to give a chance to no matter what I heard about it. There were a few warning signs though. Director Simon Kinberg’s other directorial effort was the rightfully panned and disregarded Dark Phoenix. As much as I love the cast, there’s no one in it that made me think “How’d they get ___ for this?” A January release, even in crazy COVID times, is worrisome, as that’s one of the few remaining dumping grounds on the box office calendar. Ultimately, my stance on the criticism of The 355 (26% on Rotten Tomatoes) falls under the category of “I hear you, but calm down.”

 

I won’t say the story of the film is anything special. There’s a program that, in the wrong hands, could cause WWIII or something. Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Bingbing Fan Penelope Cruz, and Diane Kruger are all agents working for competing countries to stop the device from getting into the wrong hands. When they realize they are all fighting for the same cause and the agencies they work for have moles or outright villains in them, they form an uneasy alliance. This is a pretty boilerplate setup. Anyone seeing the movie is there for the team up, not the plot.

 

The 355 has many issues. I can’t deny that. It’s a movie where you see every twist coming, but I don’t think the filmmakers are trying to sell you very hard on the twists. Of course someone is a double-agent or we’re misunderstanding someone’s motivation. I signed up for that. It takes too long to put the team together and the ending definitely overstays its welcome. The movie is not as fun as I’d like. And I don’t just mean funny and banter-y. I mean there isn’t much life to the relationships that develop between the characters. They feel more like a checklist of backgrounds. The action sequences are fine. Post-John Wick, there’s always the hope that a movie will show off physicality a little more. Simon Kinberg just isn’t that kind of director.

 

I’ve heard the sentiment that this feels more like a streaming movie. Netflix has a collection of produced or acquired films like Gunpowder Milkshake, Kate, and Ava that all have the “here’s an actress you like beating people up” appeal. I do think The 355 is destined to do better streaming. There’s something about a theatrical release that gets people expecting a movie to be more. I’m guilty of this. When I go out of my way to see a movie in a theater, I can challenge it to justify itself rather than just appreciate that it’s doing its thing.

 

The 355 isn’t a serious movie. The highest reasonable expectations for it were maybe $100 million box office with international appeal and a reasonable streaming and rental life. It’ll fall short of that. Most movies do. It was enjoyable enough for me though. Jessica Chastain is good at being good at her job. I don’t get to see Diane Kruger enough, and I hope this gets her into more OK action movies. Nyong’o always elevates her material. I do think Penelope Cruz is wasted with the “rookie” or “civilian” role in this. And Bingbing Fan could’ve been inserted a little better.

 

If you’ve noticed, this isn’t a ringing endorsement from me. However, the poor opening weekend numbers and Rotten Tomatoes score make it seem a lot worse than it is.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Scream

Formula: Scream ^ Scream 2 ^ Scream 3 ^ Scream 4

 

Scream really should be among my favorite horror movies. It combines two of my favorite things – horror and meta commentary – in a very satisfying way. It came out at the perfect time for me as a budding horror aficionado. I was 9 in 1996: young enough for horror to still feel intimidating but young enough to want to try anyway. And it is undeniably a key text in horror history, marking a shift in the way horror was made and discussed. As is, I respect the movie more than I love it. At the risk of sounding like an opening to a Scream movie, slashers have never been my thing. I do assume that at the rate my estimation of it is growing, one day that respect may turn to love. What I do know is that I really should’ve rewatched one or several of the movies before seeing 2022’s Scream.

 

As with any proper Scream movie, it’s hard talk about 5’s story (that’s what I’m calling this one for simplicity) without referring to itself a lot. Explaining it feels derivative and familiar…on purpose. In this one, after her sister (Jenna Ortega) is attacked by Ghostface, a young woman named Sam (Melissa Barrera) returns to Woodsboro with a secret that connects her to the massacre in the first movie. Sam’s sister has a group a friends similar in structure to the 1996 movie, full of suspects. Eventually, she employs or receives help from figures from the franchise’s past – Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) – to solve a string of Ghostface murders inspired by both the actual Woodsboro events and the Stab films based on them.

 

Scream is allowed to be up its own ass in ways that other movies can’t get away with. It’s patient zero when it comes to self-aware horror, so where a movie like Matrix Resurrections winking knowingly at the camera annoys me, in Scream it excites me. And 5 does a really good job playing with how much it can recur on itself. There are several scenes that mirror classic ones from the franchise or escalate on them. They have discussions that sound like they are quoting a review of 5 in real time. It’s so much fun seeing how brazenly 5 has its cake and eats it too. 5 ends up being the second-best Scream movie by being about how it could never be better than Scream.

 

At some point I have to get past the fact that everything I could say about this movie is also commented upon in the movie. This is a great Scream cast. Melissa Barrera (fresh off a star turn in In the Heights) is a great 2022 edition Sidney Prescott. Her sister’s collection of friends is a “teen character all-star” group of TV standouts: Dylan Minnette (13 Reasons Why), Jasmin Savoy Brown (The Leftovers), Mason Gooding (Love, Victor), and Mikey Madison (Better Things). The movie does right by the returning cast members, knowing when to be reverent to them and when to push them to the side. David Arquette in particular gets to exercise acting muscles I’ve never seen from him.

 

It’s hard to find much I didn’t like about the movie. It’s the only franchise I’ll allow attempts to critic-proof it by calling out its problems in the movie. 5 does feel a little light on deaths. There’s a little too much plot armor happening and you start to wonder how no one is getting stabbed in vital organs. I wish they found 5% more for Campbell and Cox to do. The movie does get so fixated on how it can mastermind something clever that it forgets characters can make some choices naturally too. Again, anything I try to pick at about 5 sounds like I’m asking it to be less of a Scream movie. Instead, I’ll leave it with this. 5 is the most natural of the Scream sequels and is the best ode to what Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson did in the original. It could only be made 25 years later by people who were able to be shaped by the franchise itself.

 

Side Note: I also wish this movie would’ve gone harder at “elevated horror”. I hate the term although I do love the movies people are referring to with the term. I was surprised that 5 takes more of an “us vs. them” stance on classic slashers and “elevated horror” rather than attacking the very notion that only a certain brand of horror is worth praising. Granted, I would’ve been happy if the movie turned into Jenna Ortega and Jasmin Savoy Brown having a My Dinner with Andre-style discussion of horror.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend