Scream 2022 Has An “Elevated Horror” Problem
Although it has been a box office success, Scream 2022 has a problem making sense of last decade’s rise in “elevated horror.” While the original 1996 Scream had novel criticisms of the cheap jump scares that riddled many of the day’s slasher movies, Scream 2022 has difficulty expressing its relationship to this newest evolution in popular horror movies. Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), one of the most dynamic characters in the new movie, embodies the younger generation’s love of this new horror.
In the opening scene of Scream 5, Tara tells Ghostface over the phone that her favorite horror movie is The Babadook. She emphasizes the ability of elevated horror movies to wrestle with more serious issues than the cheap jump scares and gory kills of tired, trope-ridden horror franchises like the fictional Stab series. But this invocation of elevated horror leads to very little in the rest of the movie, which instead focuses on the recent trend toward franchise reboots, sequels and “requels” while giving into these trends itself.
Related: Why Sidney Is In Scream 2022 So Little
Prestigious elevated horror movies which tackle heavy issues, like those from filmmakers Jordan Peele and Ari Aster and production companies like A24, have captured the attention of audiences, and rightly so. This makes them the perfect target of the satire that Scream offers, but the latest entry in the series fails to make anything of this beyond passing references to elevated horror. By choosing to acknowledge but then largely ignore this new horror movement, Scream 2022 missed out on an opportunity to grow the series in a new direction.
The boom in arthouse horror in the 2010’s achieved the rare balance between audience enjoyment and critical acclaim for
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