Fans get ready to ‘Scream’ as the horror franchise returns to screens

It was five days before Christmas in 1996, a time when Hollywood conventionally locks in releases of tentpoles or feel-good movies, when Dimensions Films took a gamble with the release of ‘Scream’. The dark and twisted slasher film broke all the rules of horror to become the sleeper hit of the season, sparking three sequels in quick succession, with a fourth one now ready to return to Woodsboro 25 years after Ghostface first terrorised the small California town.

Yet, even as ‘Scream 5’ hopes to revive the horror that Wes Craven unleashed on screen with the opening sequence featuring a young Drew Barrymore and that now-immortal line, ‘Do you like scary movies?’, it remains to be seen whether the director duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett can effectively serve up the scares with equal terror.

With the original cast returning to the franchise to cut down Ghostface one last time, with a little help from young blood, we take a look at everything we know about the legacy of ‘Scream’ and how the fifth film hopes to pay tribute to Craven as it releases in UAE cinemas this Thursday.

A twist in the tale: Using their intense appreciation for the characters created by Kevin Williamson in the original franchise, writers Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt were greatly influenced when developing the new characters in ‘Scream 5’. “Our story follows a young woman named Samantha Carpenter, who left Woodsboro five years ago,” Busick said. “She basically left her younger sister Tara behind and still blames herself for it. So when Tara is attacked by Ghostface, it becomes the catalyst to bring Samantha back to town. And from there we introduce a whole new group of friends from Tara’s high school. Naturally, everyone is a suspect and we point fingers at each of them. Then little by little, our legacy characters, Sidney Prescott, Gale Weathers and Dewey Riley, are drawn back into the mystery.”

Why the return is different this time: Twenty-five years after a string of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers in a bid to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past. And while certain horror movie ‘rules’ usually paint the arrow, pointing the way to the killer behind the mask, the final trailer does feature David Arquette’s Dewey saying there’s something that feels “different” about it this time. A series of character posters, featuring the original cast with the newbies, also shows each of them holding the Ghostface mask, implying that the killer could be anyone this time, even one of the legacy heroes.

Cashing in on a successful franchise: The original ‘Scream’ featured a young Neve Campbell playing Sidney Prescott, the target of the Ghostface killer who leaves a bloody trail in his wake in the town of Woodsboro. With a string of murders terrorising the sleepy California town, a news hungry reporter (played by Courteney Cox) and a Deputy Sheriff (Arquette) lead the investigations to unearth the killer.

The sequels, which were released in 1997, 2000 and 2011, continued the story of Sidney as she overcomes the trauma of the first killings, only to learn that terror unleashed by Ghostface refuses to die. Such was the impact of the franchise with audiences that the four films went on to gross close to $608 million at the global box office in totality. But its cultural influence on the horror genre itself remains to this day.

Wes Craven (pictured) and Kevin Williamson’s pairing: The horror master Wes Craven directed all four films in the franchise, despite turning down the project initially for being too dark and violent. There was something about screenwriter Williamson’s story of a masked killer terrorising a town that struck a chord with Craven who hopped over from the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ franchise to explore the slasher genre with ‘Scream’.

Craven was largely influenced by John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ (pictured) when he set out to direct ‘Scream’, but decided to push the boundaries of the horror genre to make it his own, with Williamson partnering with him across three of the four films. Interestingly, Williamson’s story was reportedly inspired by the real-life story of The Gainesville Ripper, an American serial killer who murdered five students in Gainesville, Florida, over four days in late August 1990. The killer, whose real name was Daniel Harold Rolling, was sentenced to death for the murders in 1994. He was executed by lethal injection in 2006.

Changing the rules of horror: Craven threw out the rulebook that dictated horror, choosing rather to experiment with ‘Scream’, a test-run that would ultimately pave the way for genre-savvy filmmaking. A perfect example was the movie’s opening sequence, a 12-minute sinister gameplay that featured Barrymore at the centre. The former child star and Hollywood royalty gave audiences the notion that here’s the film’s lead, an innocent college student who has found herself the target of a deranged killer. Yet, rather than turning Barrymore into a survivor story, Craven chose to have her brutally killed off and hammered home the message — all bets were off this time around. The rest is history, as they say.

A new ‘Scream’ without Wes Craven: The reboot is the first film in the franchise not directed by the horror master, who died of a brain tumour at age 76 in 2015. Lead star Campbell told Entertainment Weekly in October that she was reassured to join the project by the new directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who were fans of Craven and Williamson’s original creation. “I genuinely was in two minds. The idea of making these films without Wes Craven seemed challenging to me. I loved the man very much. But Matt and Tyler wrote me a letter, speaking of their appreciation and great respect for Wes Craven, and speaking of the fact that the very reason that they are directors today was because of these movies and because of Wes, and that meant a great deal to me,” Campbell said.

Return of the legacy cast: Arquette was the first member of the original cast who confirmed he would return for the fifth instalment, reprising his role as Dewey Riley, paving the way for his ex-wife and co-star Courteney Cox to also approve the project, cementing her return as Gale Weathers.

Campbell (left) remained a hard sell, unsure whether she wanted to return to the franchise without Craven at its helm. However, following the letter from the directors, Campbell revealed that she decided to do her own research into the directors before saying yes. “I realised that they were superbly talented, and that their movie was certainly in keeping with the tone of the ‘Scream’ movies,” Campbell told Collider last year. “Plus, the fans love these films with all their heart, and they always ask me if I’m going to make another one, so it seemed like a great way to honour them too.”

The Weinstein connection: The journey to carry the ‘Scream’ franchise forward began in 2018 when independent film studio Lantern Entertainment purchased the assets of the Weinstein Company following movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s (pictured) fall from grace over the #MeToo scandal that saw him face jailtime over assault. The assets on sale also include the rights to ‘Scream’. Veteran Hollywood producer Gary Barber and a group of investors then joined forces with Lantern to form Spyglass Media Group and took over the rights to the library and the franchise.

According to Spyglass President of Production Peter Oillataguerre, who serves as executive producer on ‘Scream’, continuing the franchise was always a top priority for Barber. “Gary saw the value in ‘Scream’ from the very beginning, so it was the first project we really focused on,” he said. “And that’s because ‘Scream’ is more than just a horror film. There’s an element of fun involved in this series that goes beyond horror.”

Did you know? Courteney Cox, who was a huge star at the time courtesy her role as Monica Geller on the sitcom ‘Friends’, wanted to change her on-screen image as the neurotic girl nextdoor, which ultimately prompted her to take on the role of the fame-hungry Gale Weathers in ‘Scream’.