Seventeenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #3 Happy Death Day 2U

 Holy moly, y'all.  It is just such a struggle for me to watch a horror movie this year: after sixteen years of loving it, I am not in a good headspace for it.  Case in point: I've tried twice now to watch Smile 2 but have only made it through about twenty minutes each time.  It's just too tense for my current state of mind - I need a good monster movie.

But what I watched instead was another sequel, Happy Death Day 2U.  Here's the link to the first one - Happy Death Day - that I watched in 2021.  You can just read that review instead because this second one is pretty much just like the first one, except our heroine has help figuring out what the hell is happening to her.  It's cute enough, not at all scary, and I'm at least congratulating myself on getting through it.  But is it horror?  Oh no it is not.  (I kind of like the poster tho'.)

I will try to get my shit together but this year's Scarelicious October Movie Series is just a shadow of its former self.

Seventeenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #2 Scream 6 (2023)

  Is it odd that Scream 6 came out just one year after Scream 5?  Seems odd to me but I don't care enough to delve into the filmmaking wherefors and whys because this installment marks the return of Hayden Panettiere, who only just died untimely a few weeks.  Because I like to torture myself, I've been rewatching Heroes (which I started before she died and which I used to recap for this blog back in its early days) and now that she is gone, it is very bittersweet to see her onscreen, so very young.  So it was really nice to see contemporary HP in Scream 6 and get to watch her be a bit of a bad ass.

Anyway, this movie rejoins sisters Sam and Tara from the last movie, as they have moved to NYC (and live in a ridiculously huge apartment) to try to put their Ghostface experiences behind them.  It doesn't work, of course, because this is a horror movie, and after a misdirect in the opener (Samara Weaving getting the slice-and-dice honors this time), Ghostface is back, ready to enact vengeance.  Basically all the survivors from the last movie are back, except that Sydney doesn't make an appearance - and the movie suffers for her absence.

HP is back as Kirby from #4, this time an FBI agent.  She is VERY short.  Dermott Mulroney plays a cop and chews up all the scenery.  There is terrible de-aging for Skeet Ulrich and I would like to reiterate that Courteney Cox should please, please lay off the fillers.  

Plenty bloody, some decent jump scares and a fake out or two on who the real killer(s) are.  Not the best Scream though.

Seventeenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #1 Scream (2022)

I gotta be honest with y'all - I am struggling to embrace the scary season like I never have before.  I think it's just that [gestures wildly] everything is so scary in this country right now.  Usually I like to escape to horror movies to take a break from [gestures wildly] everything, but this year is just so exhausting and horrible that I'm finding it difficult to rally.  All that to say: this may be the fewest horror movies I watch in October in recent history.  And the reviews may be threadbare.  Sorry.  Trying to do better.  Making no promises.

It has been a minute since I've seen a Scream.  The last one was IV - a/k/a Scre4m - which came out in 2011 (and which I watched in 2018).  And then, eleven years later, we get the next one, a "requel," in the parlance of the movie, as meta as ever, with brand new characters closely connected to legacy characters.  This time we follow a pair of estranged sisters who are forced back into each other's lives when new Ghostfaces reemerge in Woodsboro, twenty-five years after the first Ghostface killings.  And they need back-up, so we get to see Dewey (David Arquette), Sydney (Neve Campbell) and Gail (Courteney Cox - who should really stop fucking with her face) because who knows better how to stop a Ghostface than those badasses?

After a pretty brutal opener that is a direct callback to Drew Barrymore in the first film, this fifth installment is the typical mix of light tone and rigorous kills that is the hallmark of the series.  It's okay, a little nostalgic to see old faces again, plus a return to Stu's house.  I loved middle-aged Sydney and Gail; I also loved how everyone is brunette.