The first full trailer for the long-awaited Scream just dropped, providing viewers with their first look at a whole new generation of characters—and then giving them what they really want, which is a reunion with the franchise’s long-suffering legacy heroes Sidney, Gale and Dewey. Because let’s be honest, all that fresh blood is just going to end up staining the floorboards in some Woodsboro mansion before long.
The trailer opens with the now-obligatory setup of a teenage girl alone in a big house. The technology might have changed (Gen Z are clearly more averse to just picking up a landline phone when it rings than poor Drew Barrymore was in 1996, and the remote-controlled door locks are new), but the scene ends more or less the same way: the girl is brutally murdered, kicking off a series of grisly killings.
Cut to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), the heroine of the first four movies, being informed that her worst nightmare is happening all over again. While Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) looks grizzled and jaded in this movie, a departure from his slightly goofy persona in the original trilogy, and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) admits to “never” being ready for the ordeals they face, Sidney is prepared.
As you might expect from a final girl who has outlived no fewer than seven serial killers at this point, Sidney hardly even acts surprised when she learns a murderer has once again taken up Ghostface’s mask and knife in her hometown, and immediately starts schooling the younger characters on how to survive the “rules” she’s learned over the years. And in just two short minutes, the trailer teases a rewarding conclusion to a character arc that has spanned three decades.
When we caught up with Sidney in Scream 2, she was traumatized from her experiences but trying to rebuild her life. In Scream 3 she was living in seclusion, terrified of the outside world. In Scream 4, she appeared to have dealt with her past, and had even penned a book about overcoming trauma before nearly dying at the hands of a family member. And now, the fifth time around, she is taking no precautions.
One of the first lines we hear Neve Campbell speak in the trailer is “I’m Sidney Prescott, of course I have a gun,” telling the audience that they are in for a bloody showdown even before they see her enter the house where the original killings took place 25 years ago. It looks like Scream will follow a similarly cathartic narrative as the 2018 Halloween sequel, which saw Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) prove she is just as resourceful in middle age as she was in 1978.
The only question that remains, though, is whether this movie will serve as a swan song for Sidney Prescott. While Neve Campbell is clearly game to reprise the role, it would also make for a memorable installment (not to mention a gutpunch for the audience) if she were to finally get killed off.
Presumably if it performs well, more sequels will follow. Can the franchise survive without its original final girl? And given how inextricably Sidney has been linked to each and every killer so far, what would a Scream movie without her even look like?
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