THAT WAS THE SHRIEK THAT WAS

Opening this weekend...

Scream--"Ghostface" is back, skulking around the California town thus haunted periodically since the '90s, murdering youths and the occasional adult. Our heroine (Melissa Barrera), whose estranged sister is the first victim of this new spree, returns to town to probe the case, which eventually involves her with the aging characters from the earlier episodes.

Of all the worthwhile works of the late Wes Craven, his tongue-in-cheek 1996 slasher saga Scream has never been one of my favorites. It's okay, but I've always thought it was a little too pleased with itself and cute in its self-conscious "meta" deconstruction of the "rules" of the slasher genre. Also, the Big Reveal at the end always seemed to me like a slight cheat.

As I watched this fifth film in the series--another sequel; not a remake, despite the title--I also realized that (as a moviegoer, not a critic) I'm pretty well done with slasher flicks. Without here bringing any moral judgements into whether the genre is valid or not, I can say that it isn't enjoyable for me any more. I no longer have that aesthetic callousness that I had in my twenties; I can't laugh with amusement, like the young characters in this film do, while watching the depiction of beautiful young people being butchered. I keep thinking of somebody breaking the news to their parents.

In fairness it should be said that, judging by this new Scream at least, the "rules" of the slasher flick seem to have shifted a little over the last few decades. Most notably, the girls are no longer paralyzed with terror; they fight back, hard and often with success. And this helps, no doubt, but not enough for me to seek these movies out any more for my own entertainment.

All of these disclaimers are to make clear that when I say the new Scream is excellently done, it's not as a fan of either this series in particular or slasher movies in general. But on its own terms, the movie, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett from a script by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, is excellently done, funny and cleverly structured, with strong acting both from the youngsters in the cast and from series veterans like Courteney Cox, Neve Campbell, Heather Matarazzo, Marley Shelton and especially David Arquette, amiably dim as ever.

There's trenchant commentary here on the absurd "fan service" requirements of today's movie franchises, and the petulance of today's almost impossible-to-please fans. Early on I guessed, correctly, the identity of the killer, but that wasn't a deal-breaker for me. Also, like last year's Halloween Kills, this film is, if memory serves, much gorier than the original Scream, but I can't say I found it especially scary. That wasn't a deal-breaker either; as I've gotten older and wimpier, I'm okay with horror pictures that aren't that scary.