The fifth instalment of the knowing slasher franchise brings back the old but focuses on the new. Is it a return to form?This article contains spoilers for Scream
![Scream: new characters, new rules, new killers – discuss with spoilers](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bd04a58dfbc3e43ba08aee47757a68002e0fa796/0_208_3120_1872/master/3120.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=68396d286eb4505f13cf22df602f9089)
What’s your favourite scary movie? If you came of age in the 90s there’s a strong chance it was Wes Craven’s 1996 slasher Scream, not just because it was (and still is) a genuine masterwork, but because it arrived during a decade when the quality of horror films was scarier than the content.
Scream was a rare horror film that existed in a world where people actually watched horror films, so trying to avoid getting stabbed meant being hyper-aware of the rules that underpinned the genre, brutally instilled by two fanboy killers. The series proceeded with predictably diminishing returns but, for a slasher franchise, the sequels were still smarter than most, crafting a fairly detailed universe of interconnected bloodbaths and the inevitable films based off them (the knowingly wretched Stab franchise). A decade after the hugely underrated fourth chapter, Ghostface is back in Scream (the same title being a jokey reference to a theme in the film although really more of a way to lure in a broader audience outside of Scream completists), but is his or her return from creative necessity or just commercial inevitability?