Why hasn’t the Scream franchise been killed off?

It’s likely Scream VI will give audiences an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu

Scream VI trailer, Paramount Pictures/YouTube screenshot
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In December 1996, audiences lining up to see a teen horror picture starring Drew Barrymore, from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street, got the shock of their lives. Not only was Barrymore, the best-known actor in the film, brutally murdered in the first fifteen minutes, but the opening set-piece was arguably the most shocking moment in movies since Janet Leigh had met a grisly end in the shower in Psycho.

As Barrymore is stalked, first by telephone and then in person, by a sinister masked killer, the tension and horror build to virtually…

In December 1996, audiences lining up to see a teen horror picture starring Drew Barrymore, from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street, got the shock of their lives. Not only was Barrymore, the best-known actor in the film, brutally murdered in the first fifteen minutes, but the opening set-piece was arguably the most shocking moment in movies since Janet Leigh had met a grisly end in the shower in Psycho.

As Barrymore is stalked, first by telephone and then in person, by a sinister masked killer, the tension and horror build to virtually unbearable levels before its horrific climax. The rest of the film lived up to its opening, but for sheer, never-to-be-forgotten chutzpah, the beginning of Scream is indelible.

Nonetheless, it comes as a surprise that, nearly thirty years later, the series is still going. The Super Bowl trailer for the latest installment, the unimaginatively named Scream VI, promises the usual thrills and high-stakes death scenes, even if most of the original cast are now missing. Of the main actors, Neve Campbell, who played the lead Sidney Prescott, refused to return because she was not offered enough money — and went public about it. David Arquette, who played the hapless but kind-hearted lawman Dewey Riley, finally met his end in the fifth film after being repeatedly stabbed and tormented in the earlier movies. Only Courteney Cox, as the splendidly named news reporter Gail Weathers, has come back, making her the only performer to have appeared in all six Scream movies.

It’s likely that Scream VI will be a box office success, and the New York setting of the film at least adds a touch of variety — although the Hollywood location of the regrettable Scream 3 was also a novelty. But it’s hard to see why this particular franchise is still ongoing. Although the films have made a total of $740 million in global box office receipts, they are not cheap (the latest one is budgeted at $35 million, whereas the recent horror pictures Smile and M3gan cost less than half that and have made considerably more money than any of the recent Scream films). They also seem targeted at a curious demographic: the teenagers who would have been thrilled and terrified by the first pictures will now be in their forties, while the twenty-something market the new film is aimed at would not even have been born when the earliest ones came out.

Perhaps with this in mind, Scream VI is being released as an extravaganza, with 3-D screenings and even the novelty format 4DX, which will allow audiences to be jolted and buffeted in their seats as they watch the film. I can’t imagine a less enjoyable way of spending two hours at the movies, but perhaps that’s just me. Yet what is uncertain is whether the new film is going to be any good. Last year’s Scream was a hit — $140 million from a $24 million budget — and attracted warm reviews from critics pleased that the film’s meta-horror overtones had remained consistent.

Yet sometimes a teen slasher with humorous pretensions can be irritating rather than genre-bending. Just as the Halloween series has long since run out of energy (there are, after all, only so many ways the apparently un-killable Michael Myers can appear to die), so is the Scream series in real danger of becoming a self-satisfied wallow in its own perceived cleverness.

One of the catchphrases of the Ghostface killer is “Do you like scary movies?” Based on the evidence ahead, the answer must be “Yes, but only good ones.” Time will tell whether Scream VI justifies its existence, or if this particular round of murder and mayhem elicits little more from audiences than an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.