A core rule of slasher movies is that you should never assume the killer is dead; they will always find some way to come back. The same can also go for the victims, and a concept trailer for the new Scream combines the two, bringing back Stu and Randy.
Stu’s motivation in the original was never properly addressed, seeming to aid Billy purely for the joy of killing since, as is observed, “it’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive,” and was killed when Sidney pushed a TV onto his head, electrocuting him. Randy, meanwhile, was one of its survivors, but was murdered halfway through the sequel by Billy’s mother (“Randy spoke poorly of Billy and I got a little knife happy”). Despite this, he turned up in Scream 3 by way of a video recording that pre-empted his fears of both his own inevitable death and that the closing chapter of the trilogy would soon rear its head.
The trailer uses footage from each of the movies and the TV show (along with some other sources) to suggest that the Ghostface slayings have become so ingrained in popular culture that they’re a source of inspiration for aspiring murderers, commenting on how entitled fandoms have become in deciding the direction in which the things they purport to love should actually go, with the two formerly dead characters playing important roles in realizing this. It also partially takes inspiration from The Following, a TV series created by Scream writer Kevin Williamson about a preposterously widespread cult of serial killers, amplifying the notion that literally everyone is a suspect.
The very existence of the first Scream was intended to lovingly poke fun at how formulaic slasher films had become, and this version of the franchise’s continuation attempts to take things in a new direction. Stu and Randy, who were each there at the beginning, would certainly be best placed to offer different perspectives on how the saturation of online obsession has affected what was in the beginning a simple story.
Published: Apr 16, 2021 10:14 am