How do you make movies mocking slasher tropes when your movies have become the most well-known and financially successful slashers of the past two decades? That's the issue the Scream movies have been struggling with lately, as fans become increasingly frustrated with the direction the movies have gone. With the seventh film in the franchise coming in less than a year and promising to be very different from previous films, fans are hoping that the franchise can find some of the magic of the original 1996 flick. And with some of its biggest stars not returning for the newest iteration of the iconic Scream franchise, screenwriter Guy Busick has a chance to do some really interesting things with the famous meta-commentary the films have become known for. But if Busick really wants to freshen things up, he'll stop mocking 80's slasher tropes that Gen-Z audiences never knew and toxic fandoms that don't warrant a mention anywhere off the internet. Instead, he should consider addressing, commenting on and ultimately mocking some of the more recent trends in horror like....
Racism as the Real Horror
With TV shows like Lovecraft Country and Them, as well as movies like Sinners and the 2021 Candyman reboot, horror has fallen in love with the idea that there's nothing as scary as America's racial issues. And since masked (and hooded) men have chased and murdered people of color in the USA for centuries, it's not hard to see why. But while the Scream films have gotten increasingly diverse in their cast members, the franchise hasn't addressed racism very much. That should change. Maybe Woodsboro's history of murders leads to white flight and the town has to grapple with that demographic change. Perhaps a debate about who the killer or killers are finally acknowledges that one of the new "rules" of horror is that making all your villains non-white doesn't work in 2025. Maybe Ghostface has killed some black girls in other towns, and the "Missing White Woman" obsessed public just didn't care as much. There's fertile ground in addressing horror's recent obsession with race in America, if the Scream movies have the guts to explore it.
The "Back to the 80's/90's" Trend
For decades horror movies have struggled with what to do about cell phones. With "no signal" both becoming a signifier of bad horror writing and an increasingly weak excuse as cell phone coverage improves every year, tons of horror movies have decided that since they can't write around cell phones, they'll just set the film in a time before they existed. Whether it's the Fear Street movies, Totally Killer, Timecut, Y2K or V/H/S 94, plenty of horror movies have realized the lack of terror killing tech in the 80's and 90's makes them the best time periods to set a slasher flick in. Scream is a franchise whose most iconic scene involves a girl answering a landline telephone without caller ID, so it's tempting for its filmmakers to do the same. While they won't, the guys behind "Stab" sure would. As AI becomes good enough that the films might not need multiple killers to taunt victims on the phone while somehow hiding nearby and remaining silent, it'd be nice to see the guys behind Scream mock Stabs's refusal to adjust to technology by resorting to the "back to the 90's" trend. Or maybe the kids of Woodsboro would enjoy a 90's themed party that involves only using the tech of that time period, not realizing they're setting themselves up to be murdered. Any way they do it, seeing the Scream films mock horror writers for using time travel instead of finding a way to work around technology would be a welcome sight for frustrated horror fans.
The Explosion of Folk Horror
The woods will always be scary, but for whatever reason, the kids of Woodsboro don't tend to hang out in them. Drinking in town forests is a rite of passage for most suburban teens, so why wouldn't Scream send our underage partiers into the woods for a little fun away from their parents? Since there's only so many times you can watch a suburban teen stare outside of a glass window, it would be nice to see the franchise take to the woods. In doing so, they could poke some fun at the spooky forest stuff like Men, The Ritual, and Hellbender. At the very least, it'd be funny to see indoorsy kids become scared that rock cairns are spooky symbols instead of the work of bored hikers.
Thinly Veiled Remakes of Other Movies
As much fun as Happy Death Day was, the film was essentially a horror version of Groundhog Day. Freaky was just Freaky Friday turned into a slasher flick. Longlegs sure reminded a lot of folks of Silence of the Lambs with a supernatural twist, and Midsommer was basically The Wicker Man without the Christianity stuff. If there's always someone in a Scream movie who is way too film-savvy to fall for the typical slasher tropes, would they be smart enough to recognize that their killer isn't following the tried-and-true slasher formula, but is instead creating a thinly veiled remake of a totally unrelated, possibly not even horror movie? That could be a whole lot of fun to play around with, as horror fans could be reminded that their tunnel vision has them thinking too much about horror movies to realize what's really going on.
Once groundbreaking, the Scream franchise hasn't had its finger on the pulse of modern horror trends for a while. With a bit of work and some outside the box thinking, the franchise could easily find its groove again. But to do so, they're going to have to stop being so self-referential and start looking at other horror films outside of their franchise. In less than a year, we'll see if they do.