*The following article contains massive spoilers for Scream (2022)*
Here’s a review without spoilers if you’re interested!
“How can fandom be toxic?” asks Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid) in Scream (2022). He does so while aiming a gun at his girlfriend Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), and holding Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) at knifepoint. “It’s about love,” he carries on, practically spraying Sidney with spittle as he does. The lines come as part of the requisite third-act reveal about who has donned the Ghostface mask this time around. For this Scream, it turns out Richie has joined forces with Amber Freeman (Mikey Madison) after meeting her on a horror subreddit that, I can only imagine, counts as one of the more deranged spaces on the internet. Their motivation for drawing Sam back to Woodsboro by nearly killing her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) is that they think all the Stab movies, Scream’s in-universe stand-in for itself, have gone “to shit.” So, they’ve taken it upon themselves to provide Hollywood with fresh inspiration.
Since Wes Craven let the franchise loose in 1996, Scream has made a meal of deconstructing the horror genre. The original launched a wave of self-aware meta-slashers and horror movies, and subsequent entries have carried the torch. So, with the return to Woodsboro this year, over 25 years since the first go-round, Scream also takes on the challenge of critiquing a pop culture arena that has undergone seismic changes. The opening sequence wastes no time noting that a debate around “elevated horror” will ripple through the goings-on, and the final scenes quoted above deliver an emphatic punctuation on the point of festered fandom. Yet, on that second concept, Scream does not simply treat the Richie and Amber revelation as a tacked-on bit of commentary. Far from it. Revisiting Scream with this endpoint in mind rewards, for it uncovers a film steeped in a rejection of aimless nostalgia and noxious devotion.
Ghostface and Jenna Ortega in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s Scream
Virulently possessive fans are nothing new to pop culture. However, the introduction of the internet and social media has provided like-minded individuals a murderer’s row of platforms to connect and compare notes on how their beloved franchises have seemingly failed them through creative choices that do not hew closely enough to their personal vision. This manifests in the racist and sexist online harassment Kelly Marie Tran suffered after her appearance in The Last Jedi (2017). Or, in a similar fashion, when Anna Diop was tormented by incensed Titans (2018-) ‘fans’ for her skin color. Both instances are high-profile examples of the racism and sexism inherent in the multitude of fandoms that rise up and unleash vitriol when anyone or anything from outside the narrow confines of white, cisgender, maleness joins the franchise or project at hand.
Even when the goal is theoretically unifying, a darker reality can lurk beneath. In a Vanity Fair article, Joanna Robinson considers the circumstances surrounding Warner Brothers’ decision to release Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021). While much of the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign focused on the love for a director whose vision never made it to the big screen, Robinson notes “the toxic side of this fandom, which has targeted and harassed critics who have dared even tweet criticisms about Snyder’s work.” That reality has led to Robinson receiving death threats “on countless occasions” from the same corner of DC fandom that trumpeted the Snyder cut. As Robinson states at the end of her piece, “in not only giving over to these fans, but using their language—#ReleaseTheSnyderCut–in its official announcement, HBO Max has given legitimacy to all actions of this fandom.” In essence, when toxic fandom is rewarded for bad behavior by a major studio, it can only lead to an emboldened sense of power.
Jasmin Savoy Brown in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s Scream
What does this have to do with Scream, a fandom that, for the most part, remains positive? For all its self-commentary, Scream has never limited its satirical scope to itself or horror. This film literalizes that idea through Mindy Meeks-Martin’s (Jasmin Savoy Brown) monologue on “requels.” She explicitly lays out how fans expect more from sequels, something “new, but not too new, or the internet goes bug-fucking nuts.” Specifically, she notes the need for “new main characters” who are “connected to and supported by legacy characters.” Scream checks both boxes, but with a careful eye to avoiding the pitfalls of its contemporaries. The “new” faces mark the most diverse group of Scream characters ever by any metric, led by Latinx stars Barerra and Ortega. One of the franchise’s blind spots since the beginning has been a lack of inclusiveness, and this film actively repairs that without heavy-handed self-congratulation.
For “legacy” figures Sidney, Gale (Courteney Cox), and Dewey (David Arquette), the film’s self-awareness results in a careful calibration that rejects plot-stalling nostalgia. Sam and Richie visit Dewey for help, a logical move when faced with a situation he knows intimately. Dewey then calls Sidney and texts Gale, causing Gale to arrive in town because of the joint ventures of worrying about Dewey and chasing down the story. Sidney’s Woodsboro return comes over an hour in, and only after Dewey’s death compels her to comfort Gale and finish the job. Therefore, the ‘big three’ serve the narrative, each of their scenes and overall involvement supporting the development of Sam and Tara’s central narrative. Whereas the similar trio of Luke, Lei, and Han was contorted into pointless and narrative damaging nostalgia and fan service, Scream prioritizes storytelling and forward progress over sentimentality. Mindy’s speech is therefore a brilliant bit of in-story accountability, throwing the story gauntlet to ensure Scream avoids the pitfalls.
Melissa Barrera and Jack Quaid in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s Scream
And so, once Scream arrives at its finale, Richie and Amber’s attempt to kill Sidney and Sam, the souls of the franchise old and new, they swear it is because they “love” Stab so much. Their proclamations come at the tail end of a film structured to challenge fans to interrogate their own feelings about the past, present, and possible future of the franchise. Therefore, Rich and Amber are an apt personification of the trolls that attack those simply existing in a franchise for, as Mindy puts it, “slightly [fucking] with that special memory” of what their first impression of a franchise was. In this sense, Scream lays bare the reality that storytelling beholden to the toxically outspoken subsets of any fandom can only serve to advantage hatred. If a movie exists only to deliver satisfaction for fans who act more like violent gatekeepers than lovers, it is not a movie. It is in fact a multi-million dollar payoff for bad behavior. Here’s to Scream and the projects like it that recognize this fact, and strive to be of a better nature.
You can now rent Scream on most platforms, including Amazon (ad):
Devin McGrath-Conwell is a graduate of Middlebury College currently working on a Screenwriting MFA at Emerson College. He is a regular contributor to Geek Vibes Nation and Cinema Scholars. His work has also appeared on Portland Film Review, CBS News, and The Middlebury Campus. He has written for Horror Homeroom on white masculinity in Scream, Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, and Flanagan’s devotion to negative space. If you enjoy his work, follow him on Twitter, @devintwonames where he regularly tweets into the abyss about film, television, and, of course, horror.
