As of late, many horror franchises have released or announced “requels”: a sequel to the original film that ignores all of the previous sequels. The latest of that bunch is the release of Scream, a requel to the original film of 1996. 

The Scream requel was released on Jan. 13, 2022, received overwhelmingly positive reviews by audience members (86%) and by Rotten Tomato critics (78%). 

WARNING: Spoilers ahead! 

Most requels in the last five years haven’t been the greatest, and have just tried to remake the original film with a few minor changes. Also, every single one of them brings back a character from the original. In Scream (2022), characters such as Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), Dewie (David Arquette), and surprisingly Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) were all brought back to the big screen almost 30 years later. 

The film starts just like the first one did, but this time … it’s modernized! Actress Jenna Ortega gets a call in the middle of the night while she is alone at her house. On the phone, the one and only Ghostface asks Tara, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” However, unlike the first film, Tara is actually pretty knowledgeable in horror movie facts, as is every character in the movie. 

The Ghostface on the phone asks about the Stab movies, which is the Scream movie series inside of the Scream universe, which is based on the books that Gale Weathers wrote. Tara has very little knowledge of the Stab movies given their not-too-good ratings and seven sequels. In the scariest sequence of the movie, just like in the original, Ghostface stabs Tara and disappears.

Rather than Tara having to run to every door and window to lock them, she pulls out her phone and presses a button to lock all entries. Unfortunately, Ghostface has the same button and is able to get inside and stab Tara in a ruthless way, unlike the Ghostface from the original. 

The movie then shifts gears to the main character, Sam (Melissa Barrera), who has moved away from Woodsboro after finding out her dad was Billy Loomis. Throughout the film, she sees her father in mirrors due to her fear of becoming a serial killer just like him. With her boyfriend, Kirsch, she goes back to Woodsboro to see her sister. Yes, she survived. She tells her why she left in the first place and who her father really is before leaving to find out who Ghostface is. 

One of the best parts of this movie is the mirroring it has with the original. Specifically, the friend group consists of a few people: two people with a struggling relationship and a nerdy horror specialist that explains all of the rules of surviving a horror movie. To become even more of a mirror to the original, the final sequence of the film is a party at the original house where Billy and Stu revealed their identities to Sidney. 

In the house, we are given more mirrors to the original with our nerdy character watching the original Stab movie. It is showing the scene with Randy Meeks, the original nerdy guy watching Halloween who tells Jamie Lee Curtis to turn around, all the meanwhile, Ghostface is right behind him. 

In the new film, our nerdy character, Mindy Meeks, the niece of the original, is telling her uncle to turn around to see Ghostface while Ghostface is right behind her. This scene is one of the most famous from the original, and it is almost perfectly redone in this film. 

There are plenty more mirrors as that’s what the majority of the movie is. It is directed in a way that makes people want to go see it a second time to pick up on all of the quick references that they missed in the first viewing. Fortunately, even for people who have never seen the original Scream, the movie still does a great job at  providing the horror aspect of the category that it falls into.