The end of Scream 5

The end of Scream 5 is a zinger aimed at toxic fandomShow more

OneOne thing that separates Scream and its sequels from other long-running slasher-film series — apart from the fact that most of its characters actually understand the significance of telling someone “I’ll be right back” when a knife-wielding masked killer is on the loose — is the fact that these movies are structured as whodunits. Though the Ghostface mask has become as iconic as Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask, Freddy Krueger’s burnt face, or Michael Myers’ half-melted William Shatner mask, the legion of Ghostface killers in Scream movies never develop supernatural resistance to death. It’s a different (and very mortal) person underneath every time — usually more than one, as characters in the newest Scream point out. This makes Scream films into particularly spoiler-sensitive slashers. (No offense to Friday the 13th fans, but can most of those sequels be spoiled at all?)

But as is often the case with the Scream series, the identity of the killer matters less than what the movie is saying about its killers. So let’s talk through the revelations in the final section of the 2022 Scream, number five in the series, and what they mean for the previous films in the franchise. Fair warning: There will be major Scream spoilers from here on out.

[Ed. Note: He isn’t kidding. Ending spoilers for the 2022 Scream, aka Scream 5, ahead.]

IS RIAN JOHNSON IN THE NEW SCREAM MOVIE?

If you ask Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) early in the new Scream, she might explain that the real villain of the whole series is Looper director Rian Johnson. But the series she’s referring to is Stab, the movies-within-the-movies based on the events of Scream and its sequels. When real-world events ran out, the Stab series evidently went off on the usual slasher-movie tangents. (Back in Scream 4, someone mentioned an entry that included time travel.)

The most recent Stab movie is apparently the eighth installment, rechristened just Stab (sound familiar?) and directed by the “Knives Out guy,” as one character refers to Johnson. He isn’t mentioned by name, and he doesn’t make a personal appearance. He might as well, though; the new Scream crew is clearly thinking about the divisive, rabid response to Johnson’s Star Wars movie The Last Jedi. Mindy rants and raves about how ill-received Stab 8 was, and how it lost everything people loved about the original Stab and undermined the films that came before it. So to sum up, the last Stab was a Rian Johnson-directed eighth installment of a long-running franchise that made certain corners of the internet absolutely lose its mind over perceived slights to a nostalgic property. Noted.

A greater ambiguity in this scene is what Scream 5 is saying about the never-ending Last Jedi controversy. Like her uncle Randy, the designated film geek of the first two Screams (with a video cameo in part three), Mindy is a fast-talking movie nerd who’s funny and likable. That makes her veiled shots at Last Jedi seem like a voice of expertise rather than fan entitlement. For a while, it seems like the movie is trying to have its cake and eat it too: satirizing the out-of-proportion fan derangement over The Last Jedi while also recasting Johnson’s thoughtful tweaks to Star Wars as equivalent to one of those late-period Halloween sequels that go off in nonsensical and vaguely insulting directions.

After all, Scream 5’s point-of-view character Sam (Melissa Barrera), who has returned to Woodsboro after years away after her sister was attacked by someone in a Ghostface mask, doesn’t seem to have much opinion about movie franchises. She depends on people like Mindy (or her sister Tara, who claims to prefer “elevated horror”) to define the rules.