Given the rich potential of the Scream franchise’s core concept – genuine whodunnits are few and far between these days – there’s a real excitement growing amongst fans for the return of Ghostface. This is accentuated by the fact that filmmaking collective Radio Silence has inherited the franchise from the much-missed Master of Horror, Wes Craven – their 2019 horror-thriller Ready or Not was wonderfully received by a broad audience, and deservedly so, it was ace. It’s also very reassuring to learn that creator Kevin Williamson has been involved in the project from day dot, despite not providing the screenplay this time, sadly.
We’ve been following the production since the start, and today comes news that the fifth film in the series has miraculously now completed filming (the COVID concerns must have been eased by the fact that there’s a lot of masks in the movie!), and they’ve unveiled its official title:
Scream
Huh. Now, we’ve become accustomed to this minimalistic approach to titling in the past – most notably 2018’s Halloween – but this is usually reserved for sequels attempting some kind of reboot (that particular film discarded eight films in an attempt to clean up the canon), which for all intents and purposes this entry is very much not. As we all know, this new movie features all of our favourite (surviving) characters from the original series and sees Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette return to reprise their roles…
…or does it? Could this unusual approach to titling hint at something more? Could it be that this isn’t actually a continuation of the narrative we’re familiar with, and instead be some kind of meta twist, with the actors themselves being picked off by Ghostface in the ‘real’ world?
Maybe. Or it could just be a functional yet gobsmackingly unimaginative title and we’re reading way too much into it.
Time will tell. (That time being January 14th, 2022 to be precise.)
For those who haven’t read it already, here’s the official synopsis below (and note the deliberate vagueness)…
A new installment of the ‘Scream’ horror franchise will follow a woman returning to her hometown to try to find out who has been committing a series of vicious crimes.
We’ll have more details on Scream 5 – sorry – Scream, as they come…
