David S

Nobody is doing what Matt Johnson is doing! Taking spliced footage from your previous 2008 project that didn't get finished and finagling it to fit a larger time travel plot and finishing the film in 2025 is some of the coolest stuff I have ever seen a director do. This is stylish, funny, and everything the "mockumentary" genre (if you can call this one) should be. Interacting with people that aren't actor's and strategically placing props and extras into the setting to make 2008 believable was insane. The Chicago needle drop was absolutely sick. The comedic timing was nothing short of perfect. Putting the real Jay McCarol's story in as an alternate timeline was so meta fits the plot perfectly. If his acting was a little better, this would have been 5 stars easily. Unfortunately, Matt Johnson steals the show in such a major way. I was asking myself for half of this film; "How did they actually do that?" so often and that is what makes this magnum opus material. I wish I could have seen them actually land in the Rogers Centre. I don't think any found footage comedy or mockumentary could even touch this unless Matt Johnson does it again. I am so impressed with his vision.

This film builds suspense very very well. The cool thing about that is that it is in an extremely subtle way. It isn't using score or intense shots to further that narrative. It is letting the audience writhe themselves into a twist trying to find out whether Cole is crazy or not. I think the flashbacks are put into the film very precisely and I appreciate that. The story doesn't unravel itself too soon. I am happy to see the full circle moment at the end. I really wish we got more Brad Pitt here and definitely more of David Morse. His character not having a lot of screen time makes the end of the film seem like a bad plot twist. But I do think him showing up to the book signing was a nice touch. I feel the same way about Christopher Plummer's character. I don't think we saw him enough. I don't think the production value is as good as what I wanted it to be. However, I found the very last part of the film being him meeting the woman in insurance makes the entire film feel like the characters were moving in quicksand and is honestly incredibly relatable to today's world where insurance companies truly are in control of all of it.

This felt so rushed. Everyone says that Scream is becoming Stab and it really is. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy and this franchise really needs to end. It almost would have worked better if this film was a satire and it wasn't that far off. The return character outside of Sidney and Gale were underutilized and so forced. There was no suspense or build-up whatsoever. All the themes and tropes of previous scream films that used to be meta or now just overused and ran through. The acting was not great the whole time and outside of the very beginning sequence, it just wasn't all that interesting. There was a serious upscale in gore here that I found rather surprising but kind of refreshing. But at the same time, cool kills isn't what this franchise is built on. The suspense and mystery of films in this franchise have carried it. It hasn't really mirrored the slasher franchises until this film. The killer reveals were absolutely awful and the character development of everyone outside of Sidney and Tatum sucked. This franchise needs to cut its losses. Been there. Done that. Time to throw the t-shirt away.

I am actually a fan of most of this film. I have been a turncoat MARVEL hater for the last 3-4 years. It got really boring and it became a rinse and repeat with new characters to see what would stick and what wouldn't. Moving away from mini series' and back to films was a great move and even though I sense a Guardians of the Galaxy blueprint here, I found this vastly more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Florence Pugh is obviously great but David Harbour is hilarious and I think Lewis Pullman being Bob in two universes was kind of cool too. I wanted this to be a longer film. It seems like act 2 took a really long time, which was fine, until the final act had to make up for it by being extremely quick. Wyatt Russell is really good as John Walker and that character really needed more development here. I think killing Task-Master the way they did was just lazy writing. Fortunately, my expectations were low and the mental health theme was well done enough that this film seemed pretty great on the whole. We will see if this rating stands on rewatch.