Scream 7

**Pete Wright:** Welcome to the Film Board. I’m Pete Wright. Each month we take one new release and put it on the table to figure out what it’s doing, what it’s responding to, whether it earns a place in a larger conversation about movies. This is a spoiler-filled discussion. It is opinionated, I hope, sometimes argumentative maybe. But it is grounded in the idea that movies don’t exist in isolation. They are part of a long ongoing dialogue. If you’re here because this film got under your skin, you’re in the right place.

Hello, Film Board. Do you like scary movies? I do. Actually, I like them quite a lot. I like the part where someone runs upstairs instead of out the front door. I like the part where the killer is definitely dead and then very much isn’t. And I really like the part where someone in a mask stands in the dark outside a window while the target inside just doesn’t look up. What I like most, though, is sitting down with Tommy Metz III, Steve Sarmento, and Mandy Kaplan to talk about all of it in uncomfortable detail. This is the Film Board. New theatrical releases, full spoilers.

Oh, hi team. I’m so glad you’re here to talk about this movie. I would very much like to start with a little bit of franchise footing before we start with the whole thing because, long-running franchise, *Scream 7*. And there are some familiar faces again. Familiar faces in this movie. I know that we have talked about *Scream* on this show. We have not talked about all the *Scream* movies, only five and six. And five was Tom and Ocean, and six was, I think, the rest of us: Tommy, Steve, me, maybe someone else.

**Tommy Metz III:** Six was New York, right?

**Pete Wright:** It was New York.

**Mandy Kaplan:** So much like Sidney Prescott, I abstained from five and six.

**Pete Wright:** Yes. Right. And with that, Mandy, why don’t you go first? What is your experience with the *Scream* franchise?

**Mandy Kaplan:** Well, I didn’t realize there were any movies before this one because they didn’t refer to any of them in the film. So I thought this was a brand new entity. I love *Scream*. I have seen the first couple many times, and then I did see five when it came out in the theaters. I didn’t see six. I don’t know why. I just didn’t see it. But I love *Scream*. I’m a big fan of the self-referential, almost funny, quippy, obvious, fun stuff.

**Pete Wright:** Good. Okay. Franchise. Now I know between Tom and Steve, Steve is the franchise antagonist, and Tom is constantly raising money for the next movie. He’s the franchise booster. Steve, is that fair?

**Steve Sarmento:** Well, we’ll see where we go with this one. I’m kind of curious because this is, you know, five and six were going in a different direction and this one is something else. So I think I may be in a different position than several of you on this from what I’m hearing from Tommy.

**Pete Wright:** Oh my god. All right. Tom, are you still a booster for the franchise?

**Tommy Metz III:** I’ve always been a fan, and my fandom has grown weaker and weaker. Like a candle slowly burning down as it forgot to be funny and self-referential, and instead became more and more self-serious and so obsessed with its own lore—and this movie is definitely no different—that it kind of, at risk of being crude, it just gets up its own ass when it started as a movie which is making fun of movies that take themselves too seriously and yet make mistakes. So I was really hoping for something different with Kevin Williamson. I know he’s not a big director, but he’s the one that started the entire scenario, the entire franchise. So I was really excited to see what he would bring. And with Neve Campbell coming back, I was excited.

**Pete Wright:** All right. All right. Well, I feel like you’ve transitioned us from franchise footing into Tommy’s opening thoughts segment.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I didn’t want to call him out, but that is exactly what happened. Do we—is there a demerit system?

**Pete Wright:** There is a demerit system. We actually take any stars that he gives on Letterboxd, we take one away. So his reputation is…

**Mandy Kaplan:** Wow, no, but it should be against Tommy, not against the film. Doesn’t seem fair.

**Pete Wright:** It’s the Letterboxd review of Tom. Yeah, okay. He loses half a star.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yes.

**Tommy Metz III:** This is already getting very meta just for the film world.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I’m here for that.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** All right, so given all of that, and Tom’s position already having kicked off our opening thoughts. Tom, thank you for turning the tables on me.

**Tommy Metz III:** Well, what is your situation, Pete? Did you give your footing?

**Pete Wright:** I really appreciate that.

**Tommy Metz III:** You’re welcome. It was a real twist.

**Pete Wright:** No, it was a huge twist. Then I will start doing both. I am, I think I’m a *Scream* Booster with the exception of what, *Scream 3*? I think generally I have a lot of fun with these movies. I feel like I have been able over the generations of *Scream* movies to separate my experience with the film from the quality of the film. And that tension is at the heart of my experience with *Scream 7*. Yeah, I’m sort of with you, Tom. My appetite for *Scream* nostalgia was already sated years ago, and I was excited about what they were doing with *Scream 5* and *6*. I loved the repositioning of the franchise. And to just send us right back to the origin story of the franchise is exhausting. I was just—and so I had trouble with that. Even though, and this is where we’re allowed to keep hard feelings in our head at the same time, even though Neve Campbell, I think, was the best thing in this movie. So with that, I seed opening thoughts about the movie to Mandy.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I love the way you phrased it, that you don’t have to actually like the movie to have a fun experience watching the movie. And that’s where I am. I really did have fun, even though it’s a very weak script. And I’m realizing some of the faults are just how forced those speeches are about, “this is how it works in horror movies,” which was so much fun 30 years ago when it was Jamie Kennedy, right? That was like fun, and this is now—now you have some woman who wants to be a newscaster, but she’s an expert on the horror movie. It just felt forced. But I had fun. There were some fun cameos, some fun moments. I’m a huge fan of Joel McHale. That was fun. So I ended up having a good time. I don’t go to the movies all that much anymore. So I was—yeah, it was good.

**Pete Wright:** So this is it. This is it. All right, Steve-O.

**Steve Sarmento:** So with a franchise like this, there’s always that pressure from the fan base. And then there’s backlash. And when you sort of relaunch, reboot the franchise as they did with *Scream 5*, and it seems to be going on one path. And then with *Scream 7*, it seems like they sort of go—revert back a little bit, backtrack off of that. We’re not in New York. we don’t have any of those characters. We get back with Sidney Prescott. And so I know there’s all kinds of conversations about all of that, but I’m going to take this movie for what it is. And I really enjoyed this because I can relate so much to it. I think a good horror movie has something to say. And this is really about Sidney Prescott and the horror of being unable to protect her daughter from the dangers of the world. It’s really about that. Yeah, there’s all the *Scream* dressing on it, but it really at its heart is that trauma of parents. I’ve got a 17-year-old daughter. When I was 17, I felt competent to handle these things on my own and be a strong woman. But now as a parent, I don’t want my kid having to go through those same things. So I am going to armor up and do everything I can to protect my kid from the things that made me the person that I am and that internal struggle. And to me, that was a fascinating story of that mother-daughter dynamic within the setting of the *Scream* universe or whatever, because it is so ridiculous of “you’ve got to shoot him in the head” and “just, you know, there’s always more than one. There’s always two. Or are there more than two?” All of that, which was fun, and I had a great time with that, but I really enjoyed that core story of Sidney and her mom. And to me, that’s what made this really enjoyable and worth seeing. To me, it’s like a standalone. Sure, if you had—if you have the first one and then jump to seven, I think you’re fine, except for some references to the other ones. But really, it’s this great arc of a mom and where she is in her life now. And I found that really enjoyable.

**Mandy Kaplan:** It’s Sidney Evans now.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yep, sorry, yes, the Evans.

**Pete Wright:** It is a really interesting comment, Steve, that to look at this as an arc that jumps from *Scream 1* to *Scream 7*. I honestly think had I watched *Scream 1* before, immediately before this movie, I might have had an even better experience with it. The challenge is it fits so—the expectation is that it were to fit tidily in the Radio Silence era of *Scream*, *Scream 5* and *6*, where we were doing something appreciably different. We just have to at least acknowledge the giant Barrera-Ortega shaped hole in this movie. The reason the movie exists as it is is because Melissa Barrera was fired over her social media posts and there is a pro-Palestine boycott of this movie because the movie ended up the way it is because she was fired over her comments on social media. And then Jenna Ortega left in solidarity with Barrera. It’s been a long time now since 2023 and I do regret a little bit on her behalf that the movie took this turn because this is not the story that the third in this little mini trilogy, the Sam and Tara storyline, deserved.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** And Mandy’s point in the beginning was really great that this movie completely erases that history even as we have two characters who were in those movies of the kids. Like, they’re not just junior reporters. They were part of the last two stories. At least one of them was part of the last two. Was Mason Gooding in both of them?

**Tommy Metz III:** I think so.

**Pete Wright:** I don’t recall. Yeah. So and they were reintroduced as like new characters here. And I feel like that does such a disservice to collective fan memory of the story that they were giving us, that it is super annoying. I don’t know that we necessarily need to perseverate on that. I just want to make sure it’s out. At least we have read the news and we know what’s checked. All right.

**Tommy Metz III:** Correct. And then the studio was left holding the bag, and they realized we need to finally pony up what they refused to do before, which was pay Neve Campbell what she was due.

**Pete Wright:** Yes, yeah, for sure.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah. And that’s, I mean, that’s it’s a business and yeah, in an ideal world, this isn’t the movie they would have created, but you have to work with what you’ve got. And so I’m going to judge this based on the merits of “this is what they put forward as their best effort,” I’m assuming, on this, so I’m going to judge it based on that. And would I have loved to seen the Sam and Tara characters? Sure. Will we ever get to see that? You know, likely not, but I can’t hold that against this film because this is a different story to be judged on its own. And so I’m going to look at it that way.

**Tommy Metz III:** There is one thing I can hold against this film, and it’s this film. The problem is *Scream* lives and dies by its set pieces. And by whether either it’s an exciting or interesting or creepy atmosphere or it’s a really interestingly gory kill. I thought this movie had neither. Almost across the board.

**Pete Wright:** Really?

**Mandy Kaplan:** I disagree.

**Pete Wright:** Okay.

**Steve Sarmento:** Okay.

**Tommy Metz III:** Across the board. Not interestingly gory. I mean just stabbos.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** No, the hanging and swinging, the Tinkerbell kill was fun, different.

**Steve Sarmento:** Mm-hmm. She gets eviscerated, her guts all over the floor.

**Mandy Kaplan:** And they were dangling and she kept swinging with her little character shoes.

**Pete Wright:** Mandy, for Tom that wasn’t enough disembowelment. There is a line and it did not cross the disembowel satisfaction line, the DSL.

**Tommy Metz III:** We’ve already had people hanging and being killed while being tied to stagecraft. That was how Jerry O’Connell died. So we’ve already seen this move happen. And unfortunately the entire opening cold open was spoiled in the trailer. I know some people don’t watch trailers. I do and you saw that entire kill happen. So I already knew that was going to happen. It looked extremely flat. We are still very much in the world of Netflix lighting, so I thought it looked like a TV movie. I thought this was the most deflating reveal of who the killers were in the franchise history. It’s just these two randos. And one of them is so obviously the killer for so long because in the opening ten minutes of the movie she gives this absurd exposition dump in a coffee shop and then kind of disappears for a while. What else is she going to do? Oh no, no. There was one, the bar killing when he turns into a beer spout. That was good.

**Pete Wright:** That was the most absurd and thrilling. Like the—it was the gap between “there’s no way this could happen” and “Oh my god, how satisfying is it that his mouth is a fountain.” I—that’s where it was for me.

**Tommy Metz III:** I feel like Williamson thought—like he didn’t see *The Strangers*, the original *The Strangers* movie. So he thought just having someone appear from the darkness and then disappear is new and novel. He did it three different times. It’s just—we’ve seen it. That’s been bitten off too many times. There just wasn’t enough going on in this movie. And then to fill it up with forty-five minutes of two people sitting at a table across from each other explaining exactly what’s happening and why this is important and talking about trauma, I think the movie forgot what it’s for.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Well, and I also, to your point about how we knew who the killer was, it’s also, and I say this every time, I apologize, but it’s casting. And this is what Anna Camp does all the time now. And if you’re going to bring Ethan Embry to play a weird orderly, well, we know he’s the killer. Now Timothy Simons was the fake out, right? He was the creepy director of the school play and he was supposed to plant suspicion. But we knew it wasn’t going to be any of the kids. I always joke. It’s like Anna Camp walks up and goes, “Hey Sidney,” and I’m like, “Oh, killer. It’s Anna Camp.”

**Tommy Metz III:** It’s the Glenn Close *Knives Out* rule of it’s too big of an actress for too small of a role.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah, exactly.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Yes, yes. Yes.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yep.

**Pete Wright:** Well, and this was—

**Mandy Kaplan:** And she’s so good at it. I’m sorry, I just love Anna Camp when she just goes nuts. I love her.

**Pete Wright:** She’s good. I mean this was this was—I’ll call out Steve’s proposition only because it works in his favor here. In *Scream 6* you actually called the franchise killer motivation the Achilles heel of the franchise. And boy, I think that the Jessica comparison to the last movie is right on. It is the Achilles heel of this movie. It is as weak as it gets.

**Steve Sarmento:** Oh yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** Someone read a book and then was like, “I’m going to sort of do what you do about a character that we’ve…” The one thing that I was expecting was that Anna Camp’s ex-husband was someone that we knew.

**Steve Sarmento:** Right, yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** That’s what they were lining us up for. And so for it to just have been a stranger the whole time to talk about this off-camera kill of someone that we don’t know, because then that—if it was someone that was involved with the Sidney Prescott mom debacle, all of that stuff, then that would give her reason to want to kill her son or be okay with the killing of her son, all of that stuff. But instead it was just a bunch of off-camera nonsense. I didn’t get it.

**Pete Wright:** Sometimes I have to kind of put—take myself outside of it and think, is this clever like on paper? Right? Was it scripted in a way that I could make sense of actually writing it? And the challenge is I don’t think I can.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** I just don’t think I can. I what—what Jessica’s story is, is the housemaid, right? Like that’s a different movie franchise.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** And they just drug her in here and we don’t have enough. And for a movie that is so deeply rooted in nostalgia, both nostalgia of the era by casting people like Ethan Embry and nostalgia in character by giving us the AI, the entire AI banana pants story, that is a real tragedy because the only thing that would have been more fun with dealing with all the actual film nostalgia is trying to suss out who amongst the nostalgia plants is the one. But instead they gave us a rando making it the obvious sore thumb in the entire stinking movie. Like the—if I—I don’t know. I feel for you if you didn’t figure it out the moment Anna Camp entered the frame.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** But you mentioned some of those—the AI fakeouts. Now I have not seen six. And I enjoyed that walk down memory lane. When Scott Foley popped up, I was like, “Oh, that’s right. The one that was like a Hollywood thing.” and it was fun that Laurie Metcalf got her shot. That’s fun. I know it—oh God, Tommy’s just so angry at this movie and at the world and at me for liking it.

**Pete Wright:** He’s seething.

**Tommy Metz III:** I’m not—I’m not angry.

**Mandy Kaplan:** But those things made it fun to me.

**Pete Wright:** Tom, can you feel your pulse in your face right now?

**Tommy Metz III:** I like the idea of those, but they were so lazily done. They were so green screen done. They didn’t even bother to dress up the green screen during the credits when you saw everyone come back and wave when their name was like this—they were just standing in front of green screens. It’s so lazy. Everyone just got called in for one—and then Matthew Lillard constantly going, “And that’s what I’m going to do with a knife.” Because that’s how you turn off phones. Nobody—it’s just such a—

**Pete Wright:** Nobody does that.

**Tommy Metz III:** First, he does that over and over again.

**Pete Wright:** He was always pushing way too far away from the camera.

**Tommy Metz III:** It’s just so lazy.

**Pete Wright:** God.

**Tommy Metz III:** I couldn’t stand because see—see Mandy, the reason that that makes me mad is I wanted to like it. But it was so thrown together and everyone obviously had an afternoon, not including Makeup Magoo, that I just—I have trouble. I can just see through it. It’s just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, unfortunately. I did want to see that. And to your credit, I really liked Joel McHale in this movie. I’m glad he didn’t turn out to be the killer. And I liked him. I thought he was very convincing as a cop and a father action star. I thought he was really cool. I liked him.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I sat next to him at a wedding. He was so wonderful.

**Tommy Metz III:** No, was it yours?

**Pete Wright:** Wow.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Many years ago. No, I wish. I just always find him so watchable and likable in his character as a jerk that—you know.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** He’s always a jerk, and he just wasn’t in this. So yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah, I guess I’m glad he’s not the murderer, but from a story perspective, I think it would have been dope to have her have married a dark fan and have him play the ultimate long con. “Yeah, I know we have like an eighteen-year-old child. I’ve been waiting to kill you all this time.”

**Mandy Kaplan:** Right. Right, right, right. Well the premise would have been now she’s the age, because they mentioned that, right?

**Pete Wright:** Yeah.

**Steve Sarmento:** Right.

**Pete Wright:** Oh good.

**Mandy Kaplan:** She’s seventeen and that—

**Pete Wright:** See Mandy it writes itself, doesn’t it?

**Steve Sarmento:** Yes. Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Well done. Yeah. Can I just ask about the AI thing? I mean, we’re in the era of AI and as a movie that makes meta commentary on the filmmaking process and on culture, how well did just the AI angle work for you guys?

**Tommy Metz III:** I’m just going to dump all over this movie. I personally hate it because when you can have deepfakes like that in a movie, nothing means anything. You can just make the world out of nothing. And still they did an egregious thing where the boyfriend practicing the AI wouldn’t just go “test, test, test.” He’d say, “I’m going to kill you, my girlfriend.” Why would he do that as the test footage? He would just go, “test, test, look at me. I’m Matthew Lillard.”

**Pete Wright:** Here’s a puppy.

**Tommy Metz III:** Movie.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah, right. He’s up, man.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah, he would—you could say anything. You would say, “Hey, this is my face test,” not call your girlfriend the B-word just to be like the world’s weirdest red herring.

**Pete Wright:** Okay.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** I think my challenge with the AI thing is that if you’re going to make a movie right now and you’re going to include an element of AI, you better damn well have a commentary about it. And this movie has no commentary about it right now.

**Mandy Kaplan:** You don’t think that people can use it to cause harm and stalk and instill fear in people and commit crimes? I mean—

**Pete Wright:** I just think that that is the absolute base argument that every movie makes. It really—I mean it’s just—it is like the least original position the movie could take. It is the least original position the movie could take. And I think there’s a lot—I mean there’s a lot that can be said about using this technology in here. And I think the challenge is it just felt like “We have to have AI in the movie because AI is a buzzword.” It was like this was the effectively keyword plot stuffing for the movie. We better have an AI angle so it shows up in reviews and people search for it. That’s what it felt like to me.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Alexa, come up with a counter argument for what Pete just said.

**Tommy Metz III:** Well, cause I—Mandy, I would have liked it if I understood more the point of why do they use Matthew Lillard’s character. If they were trying to like really make her think she was going crazy, then that would—you know, no.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Alexa, stop.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I didn’t know there was one in this room.

**Tommy Metz III:** Oh no, they’re everywhere.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Ah, sorry.

**Tommy Metz III:** Matthew Lillard shows up behind you.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Yeah.

**Steve Sarmento:** Right, yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** If they were trying to like say “you’ve lost your sanity” and really terrorize her like that, that would be exciting.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Right.

**Tommy Metz III:** Instead, it just felt like stunt casting. So if you wanted to use AI as like a “let’s scare Jessica to death” kind of a gaslighting thing, great.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** But this just—there was no reason for them to do it, especially because they didn’t have any connection to Matthew Lillard.

**Mandy Kaplan:** And it actually worked against them because didn’t it lead them to the Fallbrook Institute where then they—if they were thinking Stu Macher was alive, it led them to find the killers who always seem to want to be caught. They always want that big speech at the end and to make their manifesto heard.

**Pete Wright:** They need the speech. I just want to bring up Courtney Cox.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

**Pete Wright:** And I just want to say it because and I’m saying it like this because I feel bad about my own position.

**Steve Sarmento:** Okay.

**Tommy Metz III:** I know. I know.

**Pete Wright:** Sheminy Christmas guys, why is she in this movie?

**Mandy Kaplan:** I thought you were talking about the plastic surgery.

**Tommy Metz III:** She’s having trouble emoting.

**Pete Wright:** Oh no, I don’t—she’s had trouble emoting for a long time.

**Tommy Metz III:** I’ll say—yeah, she was doing that during the *Friends* reunion too.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Yes, yeah, yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** And the veneers now. She got veneers, so she can’t close her mouth and you can’t—her speech is impeded by everything. It’s upsetting.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah, it’s a shame.

**Pete Wright:** You know what? You—I mean you guys need to have that moment. That’s not at all what I was thinking.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Oh, okay, sorry.

**Pete Wright:** I was just looking at Courtney Cox as plot fodder. She was legitimately killed in the last movie.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yes.

**Tommy Metz III:** Oh wait, I’m getting a text from Pete.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Oh, she was?

**Tommy Metz III:** “Hey, Tom, bring up the plastic surgery.”

**Mandy Kaplan:** I love that you looked down at your phone to sell the bit.

**Tommy Metz III:** I’m too afraid to—weird. I don’t know. Okay, go ahead. It really did work.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Yeah.

**Steve Sarmento:** He’s got to turn it off now.

**Pete Wright:** That was really really good. No, you’re right. It is challenging to—it’s challenging because of her. But it’s Courtney Cox in a *Scream* movie and that just feels like—you know, I can see how it feels when you’re going on a nostalgia road trip for this movie. She sort of has to be represented. But if anyone deserved to be an AI deepfake, it was probably Courtney Cox from a plot perspective. We grieved as fans over her killing.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Hmm.

**Pete Wright:** Right? Am I crazy?

**Tommy Metz III:** I don’t remember. I thought that they all kind of ended up living. I don’t remember.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I remember David Arquette died in five, but I don’t remember—

**Tommy Metz III:** Yes, that’s the only big death I feel that we’ve had.

**Pete Wright:** Oh yeah, but no, there’s a huge fight at the end and he—or not there’s a huge fight in that apartment.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah. Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** And she just gets brutal. I mean, they have a massive fight and she holds her own until the very end. And I think he stabs her. And we got to grieve over that. I maybe I am completely crazy about this, but—

**Mandy Kaplan:** I really want to rewrite it. If you need Courtney Cox for box office draw, I get that. But Sidney could scroll back on her phone and find video messages from Gale that she never saw or, you know, just something where Gale is encouraging her to fight and stay strong and that could have been a moving tribute to Courtney Cox rather than this.

**Tommy Metz III:** Like an angel on a shoulder thing, more than just sort of showing up incredibly conveniently with a van and then disappearing during the entire climax.

**Steve Sarmento:** Oh yeah, yeah.

**Pete Wright:** I wonder how many—I’d have to rewatch the movies—I wonder how many of the seven movies she’s shown up in a van in the exact same choreography. I think the blocking is the same in almost every movie.

**Mandy Kaplan:** And just run over someone?

**Tommy Metz III:** Pretty good.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Yeah, that was—that was the only implausible part of this movie.

**Pete Wright:** You’re right, you’re right. I take it back. That was it.

**Mandy Kaplan:** That’s—that we—

**Pete Wright:** And then did you note nobody cared at all for like two straight minutes? They’re like, “now let’s go unmask him.” Which leads me into my next segment, which I would like—I’m going to dare you all to tell me what does work in the movie. And I’ll say I’ll start with this: they actually unmask a guy when he’s dead.

**Steve Sarmento:** Mm-hmm.

**Pete Wright:** And I don’t know if that has happened. I don’t have the catalog. I haven’t been keeping score. But I found it satisfying when they said, “Okay, let’s go unmask him,” and they turned over and the body was still there. Because I don’t know if you notice, every other time they think they kill somebody, the body is gone when they turn their heads for three seconds.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** That’s why you shoot him in the face.

**Pete Wright:** Always shoot him in the head. Head. Face is particularly Tarantino, Mandy.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Oh, sorry.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah. Okay. Anyway, what works in this movie?

**Mandy Kaplan:** Steve?

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah, I already told you what I think works in this movie. I enjoyed, again, looking at Tatum and her friends as that issue of growing up and striving for that independence and having an overprotective mom and all this trauma that mom has dealt with that she doesn’t want her daughter to deal with, but is visiting trauma on her by the merit of trying to protect her from everything. and it’s creative barriers. To me, that is the story that really works. There are so many other things that fail. But I’m not a horror movie person and I will always look at things of like, yeah, he’s—you’re going to turn away for three seconds and he disappears. But that’s always been the case and it’s ridiculous and it’s not realistic.

**Pete Wright:** Of course.

**Tommy Metz III:** Sure.

**Steve Sarmento:** And I suspend my disbelief on so many of those things. But yeah, there are things that work. But I thought that dynamic of just like—Tatum shows up in mom’s leather jacket and there’s a moment there. And for me, those were the moments that really work. That family drama, the sneaking out with friends of like, “I need to be my own person, I need to get out, wave for mom.” I thought that was fine. I mean, their friends themselves, they’re just 2D placeholders of “oh, it’s the quirky weird neighbor kid,” “it’s the quiet one,” all of that. So there was not a whole lot to hang on to there. I didn’t care when any of them got killed. I was like, I’m not invested, because they’re not people, they’re placeholders, they’re red herrings. But I thought the Sidney-Tatum thing worked. Even the conversation at the end—which is interesting because Tatum’s the character that never gets mentioned after the first one and then her ashes are there in *Scream 5*—but really she’s the character that as Sidney’s describing her as like her closest friend and this strong person, I’m like, I—it’s been a long time since I’ve seen *Scream*. I’d know that Tatum was set up as that character. But to me it works. It’s honoring that deceased friend and all that Rose McGowan who died in the garage door.

**Mandy Kaplan:** That was Rose McGowan, right? Mm-hmm. Garage door.

**Steve Sarmento:** But for me, that’s what I really enjoyed about this movie. Is the story played out. I thought: this is what I will latch onto. And I’m enjoying this part because everything else is just *Scream* shenanigans, which is fine. That’s the way I approach all of them. And if I’m disappointed in one of the *Scream* movies, it’s because the other thing that it has to say is not there. And if we hadn’t had that mom-daughter piece—you know, if they had figured out a way to tackle AI, that could have been interesting in and of itself too, if it was really a commentary on AI. But again, it was just slapped on. So to me that’s what worked. I enjoyed the kills. Tommy, I thought, yes, we’ve seen it—we’ve seen a kill in the theater before, but I thought, yeah, this was something a little bit different. And I enjoyed the tension of the pit and the pendulum reverse of she’s swinging back and forth and the knife is stationary. And then the reveal that there’s the three at the end. So we’ve got one. We know there’s always more than—you know, there’s always two, and then we think, “okay, this is the second one.” No, then there’s two of them at the end. It’s three. I thought that was something that I hadn’t seen coming. Was it well-crafted and the reasoning why? No, but it was something that was different and fresh for me in the idea of the video surveillance of Sidney being remote and communicating to Tatum and just how scary that is. I can see that. “I cannot be there.” To me those were the terrifying moments. And those sequences worked for me.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Well, I think the mother-daughter thing worked for me on a fun tension-building level. I’m not sure I got as invested as you, Steve, but watching when Sidney’s like, “follow me,” and Tatum is like, “what is this place?” and she doesn’t even know they have a panic room and that Sidney has outfitted the house for just this occasion.

**Steve Sarmento:** Oh yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Thank God. I thought that was fun, watching them walk behind the wall and the killer is trying to stab them. That was all fun. And having it be a mother-daughter was a bit different than two blonde girls at a summer camp. So I enjoy that. And the end, having Sidney try to help her from a remote place. That worked for me. A mom and a daughter conquering evil together.

**Pete Wright:** I agree. I think that Panic Room sequence I really liked and my only concern was—

**Tommy Metz III:** That’s not how panic rooms are supposed to work. You’re supposed to stay in the room.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yes.

**Pete Wright:** Right. Right. That was—I mean, you’re going there. Did anybody see a back door open to the panic room?

**Mandy Kaplan:** I don’t remember.

**Pete Wright:** No.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yes.

**Pete Wright:** There was a solid back door?

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah, it looked like a little sort of hamper kind of a thing.

**Steve Sarmento:** Mm-hmm.

**Pete Wright:** Oh, thank goodness.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Okay, that removes a big criticism that I had of this because I thought they just opened and closed the back door and it was just, “oh, now we’re in the crawl space.”

**Steve Sarmento:** Oh, yeah, yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah, we’re in the wall.

**Steve Sarmento:** No.

**Pete Wright:** Because it just felt like that’s probably easy to circumvent and get into the panic room.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yes.

**Pete Wright:** Okay, so I was okay with that, Tom.

**Tommy Metz III:** If we’re bringing up things that we’re not sure if we saw or heard correctly, at the end of the movie, when Gail—Gale, Courtney Cox shows up again at the end.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** Or maybe it’s earlier. No, it’s after she runs them over. I don’t remember. But she says to Sidney, “You’re bleeding.” And Neve Campbell says, “Your point.”

**Steve Sarmento:** Mm-hmm.

**Tommy Metz III:** But she says it like, “Your point.” So the line reading is “You’re bleeding. Your point.” That’s not how that line goes. It’s “You’re bleeding.”

**Pete Wright:** It’s a question.

**Tommy Metz III:** “Your point?”

**Pete Wright:** “Your point?”

**Tommy Metz III:** It has to be “Your point?”

**Steve Sarmento:** Mm-hmm.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** Like, “what else is new?”

**Steve Sarmento:** Right. Right.

**Mandy Kaplan:** “You’re fine.”

**Tommy Metz III:** “I’m Sidney Prescott,” but instead it was “You’re bleeding. Your point.”

**Steve Sarmento:** Right. Right.

**Tommy Metz III:** There were a couple lines in this movie when I was like, “is anyone watching the monitor?” Like there’s just really weird ways of delivering lines where it’s unclear—like something was fixed or remixed in post wrong or something like that. I don’t know. I just want to make sure that I heard that right. Because no one would ever deliver that line that way. “You’re bleeding.”

**Pete Wright:** Which is interesting because this was not—I think that is actually a case in point—

**Tommy Metz III:** “Your point.”

**Pete Wright:** —that this was not one of those incredibly horrific ADR parades. Like this movie did not have any of those violations.

**Tommy Metz III:** No.

**Pete Wright:** But that example says maybe they should have. I mean they should have ADR’d that a little bit.

**Tommy Metz III:** Right. Like just do a “last looks.”

**Pete Wright:** Yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** Something that I did enjoy about the movie—one sequence—although I think it really robs Ghostface’s power to just walk down Main Street, a well-lit up Main Street. One thing that Kevin Williamson back in the day, even with *I Know What You Did Last Summer*, he was always fascinated by the idea of help being right there and you just can’t reach it. And some of the *Scream* set pieces—one of my favorite ones is when Dewey—they’re in the soundproof booth in the college and Ghostface is behind Dewey and what’s her name—Sidney’s screaming—and he… but she can’t hear him.

**Pete Wright:** Oh, it’s one of the greats.

**Tommy Metz III:** And then in *I Know What You Did Last Summer*, there’s always the parade half a block away. Seeing her—I wish he would have stayed on it longer to really talk about the eeriness of it, but the idea of a young woman running down the middle of a well-lit Main Street screaming for help and no one is coming to help is really effective. I wish that we would have sat…

**Mandy Kaplan:** Because of the—they justified it with that curfew.

**Tommy Metz III:** Right.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Everything—right.

**Tommy Metz III:** Exactly.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Yes.

**Tommy Metz III:** Totally. But I still like that idea of the dichotomy of small town normalcy. Everything’s great every time you’re outside of a building, all of the leaves in the world are floating by, and yet she’s being stalked by someone that’s just walking with a knife. I really like that. And I also like McKenna Grace.

**Pete Wright:** McKenna Grace.

**Tommy Metz III:** Before the pit in the pendulum—and I really do concede that point that I like the reverse of the pit in the pendulum, but we’re in a post-weapons world. I know that this was probably made before that. Where people now just look at something and go, “what the F—” Like the first time she sees Ghostface, she just screams the F-word. Because twice in *Weapons* people just wake up from like nightmares and instead of going, “oh, it was all just a dream,” they’re like, “what’s happening? This is a horror movie.” And I dug that. I like that.

**Pete Wright:** I agree with all of your points. With exception of having it burned in the trailer, I think this was a good opening sequence. I really enjoyed it. And I enjoyed it because it’s sort of triple meta.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Okay.

**Pete Wright:** It’s triple meta because the actual house is an Airbnb experience in real life.

**Tommy Metz III:** In real life, in real real life.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Which one, the Macher house?

**Pete Wright:** I think so, yeah, the Macher house. It may not be anymore, but it was during five and six. That was all the rage on BuzzFeed, I think.

**Mandy Kaplan:** But it burned.

**Pete Wright:** When did it burn? Oh right, here. Right.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** No. Yeah. So but I really enjoy that level of commentary. I thought if this is what we’re in for for the rest of this movie then I am completely along for the ride. And I thought it was a great way to open the nostalgia play, a great way to get us back into the world. All of it—it just felt so familiar. Maybe not warm, but familiar, and I enjoyed that.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Well, and a well-known actor getting killed in the opening, which I love. I love Jimmy Tatro.

**Pete Wright:** Yes. Gotta do it.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah, yeah. And Michelle Randolph—where do we know Michelle Randolph from? We don’t know her.

**Mandy Kaplan:** She was very pretty.

**Pete Wright:** We just know Jimmy Tatro. Very pretty. Yeah. And a great kill too, having her fall from the lamp. Right?

**Mandy Kaplan:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** As he rolls over, it was outstanding.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Um, so all of that was very good. We’re getting toward wrapping up, and I have a big question for you. Thirty-four percent critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Franchise record opening weekend.

**Tommy Metz III:** I think we’re looking for a return to familiarity and normalcy right now. We want something that’s right across the bow. And the return of Neve Campbell gives us this. I think things are such that we want the safe roller coaster of a horror movie, but sometimes you want a cheeseburger horror movie and not one that’s really going to upset you and you’re going to take home with you because we have too much of that going on right now. That’s my psychological two cents.

**Pete Wright:** I like that two cents. We spent some real time on how much gas the franchise has left. Once we get into these, you know, bottom half of the tens numbers, we’ve got to ask that question. Kevin Williamson comes back specifically to try to prove that there is still something here. And I think to your point, Tom, did he do that? Well, audiences are going to the theater to find out. Critics are saying probably not. And yet the money’s going to give us another *Scream*. No doubt. No doubt. The original *Scream*, I think we addressed this a bit earlier. The original *Scream* worked so well because it was the early days of a horror movie being a platform for meta commentary. Now we’re seven films in and the franchise is still trying to wink as if we didn’t see it the first time. At what point do we exhaust meta commentary and have to return to basics? Are you tired of it yet?

**Tommy Metz III:** I don’t think this movie really did it very much. It pretended to. It cosplayed. But then you even have like younger kids being like, “let’s Agatha Christie this thing.” What?

**Pete Wright:** Wow.

**Tommy Metz III:** Like who’s writing this movie? That’s not even a good reference anymore. So I think it was just very like, “get everyone in the same room.” That was the thing. And then just constantly say, “it’s always someone you know, it’s always someone you know.” Which turned out not to be true, but that’s not a fun reveal for me. That’s the opposite of a fun reveal.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Well, they knew Jessica. She was their next door neighbor.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah, she was the next door neighbor.

**Tommy Metz III:** No, but yeah—we didn’t know Jessica. We met Jessica in one and a half scenes.

**Pete Wright:** And there was no signal to us.

**Tommy Metz III:** Everyone else was like a part of the group. Like even New York—the tagline for New York was “the killer’s in the poster.”

**Steve Sarmento:** Oh, okay.

**Tommy Metz III:** That was the tagline for the movie when it had the big group shot. And this one is “Carl’s one of them.” That’s—

**Mandy Kaplan:** Before we wrap up, I need to ask about the glitter on the Ghostface Killer costume.

**Tommy Metz III:** That was interesting.

**Pete Wright:** Oh okay.

**Mandy Kaplan:** He has never been glittery before, but all the killers in this movie were sparkly.

**Tommy Metz III:** It—

**Steve Sarmento:** No, there was always a little bit of a shimmer in that black fabric.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Oh really?

**Tommy Metz III:** Oh really?

**Mandy Kaplan:** Oh, this was particularly glittery.

**Steve Sarmento:** I seem to recall it in a couple other ones because I was always like, that’s an interesting costuming choice, but I don’t know when it showed up. I recall that from prior ones.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I assume you are right and I am wrong.

**Pete Wright:** What I like about it is that it feels exactly like something I would absolutely see at Spirit Halloween.

**Steve Sarmento:** It’s been a while. No, I—oh yeah.

**Pete Wright:** Right, like the cheap, glittery, black, ripped fabric.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Mm-hmm.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah. Mm-hmm.

**Pete Wright:** It was that on that—it’s perfect.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** But they don’t have the branding, so it’s “black cloak white man face” or whatever it is.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah.

**Steve Sarmento:** Right. Yes.

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah.

**Steve Sarmento:** As far as gas in the franchise, Pete, I’m always wondering: which one’s the nail in the coffin? Which story has wrapped it up? This feels like one where it’s like we had enough of a throwback and nostalgia to all the prior ones with the AI stuff. And it’s like—it’s not a celebratory way to end like, “wow, that was so satisfying.” But I could see that it’s like “We’ve told everything. We’ve tapped this well as much as we can.” We brought back all these former faces from the prior *Scream* franchises. Is this the end of Sidney Prescott’s story? Is it going to follow Tatum? Where is it going to go? I think it’ll keep going, but I think it’s going to have—as it did with five—I think it’s going to have to be a really strong reinvention of itself.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Tatum goes to college.

**Steve Sarmento:** I think the franchise will always do it, but as they did with five, they have to reinvent it and they have to embrace what horror is and what it’s not anymore. This is something that I’m—you’re probably going to say “shots fired.” All of this stuff, but I’m not a horror person. Like I said, I appreciate this film because it has something to say. I thought there’s something meaningful about that. Tommy brought up *Weapons*. I didn’t care for that. It’s creepy, it’s scary, but there’s nothing there to it. It’s just high concept. Here’s this one idea, but we don’t have anything to say other than “we’re going to give you some scares. We’re going to give you some creepy crawlies,” but at the end of it, we’re not saying anything. What I appreciate about the horror movies, like *Scream* and even out of the 80s and 90s, there was always some underlying theme or something driving that other than just “we’re here to make you feel unease.” And I think—

**Tommy Metz III:** Like some sort of emotional heft.

**Steve Sarmento:** Right. The analogy I use is there’s the difference between art and decor. You can hang something up on your wall and if it engages you and gives you something to think about, it’s art. If it’s just something you get from Hobby Lobby and it looks nice, it’s decor. It doesn’t challenge you or ask anything of you. It’s just like, “oh, that’s nice. I have an emotional response.” And there’s places for that.

**Tommy Metz III:** As I actively hide all my Hobby Lobby…

**Steve Sarmento:** It’s great to have that, and they have their place.

**Tommy Metz III:** “Live, Laugh, Love.”

**Pete Wright:** It’s wine o’clock somewhere.

**Steve Sarmento:** No, I enjoyed the experience. I enjoyed the experience of watching *Weapons*. That was great, but I have no need to see it again. Whereas a story that gets me thinking about what is it saying about these characters—that’s engaging to me. I don’t know how *Scream* tackles that because we’ve already done the meta thing, so I think that’s how it reinvents itself: “What do we have to say about this new sort of phase of horror that is what it is?” And again, I’m not a big fan of it, but it is in existence. And I think that needs to be confronted of what does that look like within the *Scream* universe and how they balance that. I would be on board to say we can’t keep revisiting the 90s horror meta things. We have to engage with elevated horror and what that really means for us.

**Tommy Metz III:** What if they went supernatural? What if they ditched just the straight across the board slasher movie? I don’t know if that’s possible, but it would be a real right turn.

**Steve Sarmento:** It’d be very interesting. It’s just finding the right story to crack into it. But I think the fans will show up for it no matter what, because there’s such passion for this franchise and these characters.

**Pete Wright:** One of the trailers in my theater was a perfectly placed nostalgia play. *Scary Movie* is back.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yes, yes, yes.

**Pete Wright:** Did you guys all get the trailer?

**Tommy Metz III:** Yeah, yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** And the trailer made me laugh. Out loud, it just got me.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I’m excited.

**Pete Wright:** Weirdly it got me too and I haven’t always been a *Scary Movie* fan, but for some reason that trailer demonstrated a movie that seems to really remember what it’s all about. In a way that my experience with this one—and I’ll side with Steve—I actually had, in spite of all of my generally negative opinions, I had a pretty good time at this movie. This is not a one-star movie. It was just a letdown from my expectations, which were higher based on the last two. That’s where the disappointment is. Now the ending is clearly setting up Tatum as the next protagonist. Tom, in our past movies you were on the record as saying that Sam Carpenter was not compelling enough to carry the franchise. And here we have Tatum, Isabel May. Do we think that the franchise, the next franchise movie, could actually hinge on a protagonist in the form of Isabel May? Tatum.

**Tommy Metz III:** I liked her by the end. I don’t like it when movies—when shorthand for “teenage daughter mother things” are leaving scenes before they’re over constantly. Stalking out of rooms. Not actually having a conversation. It makes me just not like the daughter, which is probably not fair. But I kind of found her a little bit insufferable, but then by the end I was really rooting for her and rooting for them together.

**Pete Wright:** Well, Sidney was doing the same thing too.

**Tommy Metz III:** I guess I also—

**Pete Wright:** It’s like, “Mom, tell me about the jacket.” “I’m not going to tell you about the jacket,” stomp away.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Pete Wright:** That was infuriating.

**Tommy Metz III:** But she also did say, “there’s all these books written and the movies and TV shows. Why don’t you read those?” because it seems like there was a fountain of information at Tatum’s fingertips.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah, but I don’t know, that’s the part of the mother-daughter relationship where I felt that visceral frustration. It’s different looking up your mom on Wikipedia than it is sitting down with your mom and saying, “Okay, I need to know some hard truth about your history.” And this movie teased that and never really gave it to us. At the very end we get a little bit about that when she explains why she named her Tatum, which was a lovely story.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah.

**Tommy Metz III:** I like that.

**Pete Wright:** And I think I could have used more of that because the movie was not about the building pressure of when will Sidney finally tell the truth to her daughter. The movie was about so much more. Give us a little bit more momentum. I think on my part, I think I would look forward to a Tatum *Scream*.

**Mandy Kaplan:** And can it please be a musical?

**Tommy Metz III:** That’s interesting.

**Mandy Kaplan:** It’s all I want.

**Tommy Metz III:** And Pete, for the record, your mom is on Wikipedia.

**Pete Wright:** I should ask her.

**Tommy Metz III:** Check that out.

**Pete Wright:** I love how once again you show us the phone to bring the receipts. Tom always brings the receipts. All right. Where does this one sit in the franchise for you? High, low? Would you put it in the top half? Bottom half?

**Mandy Kaplan:** Although I was entertained by five, I didn’t find five to be as revelatory as maybe you guys did. So for me, this is on par with that. It’s entertaining. It’s bloody. It was fun. But it’s nowhere near how inventive and clever the first ones were.

**Tommy Metz III:** I feel like I’ve beat up the movie enough.

**Pete Wright:** It’s last. It’s last on the list for you.

**Tommy Metz III:** It’s last. It’s unfortunately it’s last for me, but I don’t enjoy it being last.

**Pete Wright:** Okay. Wow.

**Steve Sarmento:** Wow.

**Tommy Metz III:** I’m not like laughing at it sadistically. I’m not rolling over at the last second as it falls off the chandelier onto my… 1.5 stars, spoiler alert.

**Pete Wright:** Oh, ouch.

**Steve Sarmento:** Tommy’s gladly taking stars from this movie to hand them to other movies, I see.

**Pete Wright:** Steve, it sounds like this one also may be in the top half of *Scream* movies for you.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah, it’s—I’d say it’s in the top half. I know I did not care for four. And five I did enjoy sort of a refresh. So yeah, I’d say it sits comfortably in that top half.

**Pete Wright:** Okay.

**Mandy Kaplan:** It’s definitely better than *Y2K*.

**Pete Wright:** All right.

**Mandy Kaplan:** Oh, Tommy. And he storms out of a podcast early.

**Pete Wright:** Shake it off, Tom. Shake it off.

**Tommy Metz III:** I’m updating Mandy’s Wikipedia.

**Pete Wright:** All right. It’s time, everybody, we need to rate this movie over on [Letterboxd.com/thenextreel](https://Letterboxd.com/thenextreel). Zero to five, half stars for some. If you like to bandy about in weak opinions, you can do a half star.

**Tommy Metz III:** I do.

**Pete Wright:** And here we go. Steve, what are you going to do?

**Steve Sarmento:** I’m going to give it three and a half stars and a like.

**Pete Wright:** Three and a half.

**Steve Sarmento:** Yeah, three and a half. I think the first one I put at like four stars. I think I’ve got it at three and a half, and I think five I have at three and a half. I’d say it sits comfortably in there in that top half.

**Pete Wright:** Okay, excellent. Tommy, 1.5.

**Tommy Metz III:** Unfortunately, 1.5 stars and no like. There was just not enough grabbers for me.

**Pete Wright:** Got it. Mandy?

**Mandy Kaplan:** Three and a like.

**Pete Wright:** That is a strong opinion.

**Mandy Kaplan:** I just want it to be positive, but I’m not claiming it’s a great movie or anything.

**Pete Wright:** Yeah. I will give it a three. And with a like. I’ll like it. And again, I’ll like complaining about it. But I was actually glad to see Kevin Williamson back directing it, back writing. It’s nice to see Kevin Williamson doing things that Kevin Williamson clearly enjoys doing. And so I had fun. I would watch more. What are we going to do next month? Tom, go.

**Tommy Metz III:** Remember that guy that was on the moon or something, and then he had to plant a bunch of potatoes? It’s kind of like that. We’re going to be seeing Ryan Gosling in *Project Hail Mary* by the writer of the aforementioned *The Martian*. So we’ll be seeing that next month. It looks like it’ll be a real tear-jerker feel-good movie. And Mandy’s already bought her tickets.

**Pete Wright:** Tom, I just want to remind you, never dress for a job you don’t want. If you don’t want to announce the movie, don’t dress like a podcaster. Thank you so much, everybody, for hanging out with us as we watch this movie. Let us know your thoughts. You can find everything we do as part of the Next Reel family of film podcasts at thenextreel.com. On behalf of Steve Sarmento, Tommy Metz III, Mandy Kaplan, I’m Pete Wright, meeting adjourned.