Warning: Contains spoilers for Scream 2022.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Scream 4’s technology problem. Scream 2022 faced the considerable challenge of honoring the late Wes Craven’s legacy and furthering the series’ social commentary. Thankfully, the fifth movie manages to subtly update the franchise without an overemphasis on technology that could date the story.
In Scream 2022, another Ghostface killer begins stalking the residents of Woodsboro. Set 25 years after the original massacre in 1996’s Dewey Riley (David Arquette), and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), last seen in 2011’s Scream 4, where a different Ghostface attempted to remake the original killings.
Amidst its satire on remakes, Scream 4 had a heavy focus on social media and the influence of contemporary technology on the killers. However, while that film struggled to find a significant method of incorporating technology into the story, Scream 2022 perfectly updates Ghostface without detracting from its plot. The fifth movie’s opening alone trumps Scream 4’s gimmick, with Ghostface’s initial attack showing the dangers of modern technology in a terrifyingly relatable way. In contrast, Scream 4 effectively copied various plot points from the previous films.
Beginning with an incredibly meta homage to Drew Barrymore’s iconic opening sequence in 1996’s Scream, Ghostface terrorizes Scream 4 cut its best references to the original.
The thought of Scream 4’s Ghostface taking the time to strategically position cameras, as seen during the Stabathon sequence, is rather impractical, and the idea copied the earlier movies. Gale’s video camera became a memorable plot point in Stu’s (Matthew Lillard) house during Scream, and Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) revealed he was filming crime scenes in Scream 2. The latter was a particularly clever clue to Mickey being the killer; he was often seen with a video camera but didn’t waste time filming the actual murders themselves. Scream 4’s video technology feels particularly dated and overly complicated. Although some people use social media to document their daily lives, the characters' contrived use of webcams and headsets doesn’t provide the more timeless quality and credibility of the earlier films. Scream 4, while underrated, also attempts to utilize technology via its voice changer app, only to take power away from Ghostface that’s once again restored in Scream 2022.
Although an interesting concept, Scream 4’s Ghostface app was swiftly abandoned as soon as it was introduced, bying the opportunity to explore the apathy of modern teenagers and their disregard for the previous massacres. The voice changer also partly recycled an absurd idea from Scream 3, where nobody’s voice could be trusted. Scream 2022 removes this problem while swiftly addressing new technology. Pressing a button on the glowing voice changer inside the mask effectively shows how Ghostface has evolved, but the emphasis remains on the visceral terror that defined the original and best Scream movie.
