This year’s Scream has brought the slasher killer Ghostface back to the big screen after eleven years, and duo directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have now discussed their approach and aspirations for the long-awaited horror sequel. Speaking with Variety, Bettinelli-Olpin begins by explaining that they would never have even dreamed of bringing the Scream franchise back if they were not confident they could do justice to the late, great Wes Craven. Something which horror fans will certainly be pleased to hear.

Far from simply being a cash-grab legacy sequel, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett were adamant about paying homage to the Scream movies passed, as well as reigniting the series with modern audiences. Something which they aimed to achieve using the meta-perspective inherent in the franchise. “So much of the movie is about fandom and what it means to be a fan and how you feel about it,” Bettinelli-Olpin explained. “We have these meta-upon-meta moments, where we’re like, holy sh–, like we are making a fan film about the making of a fan film about one of our favorite franchises. You could spiral.”

“We have spent so much of the last two years thinking about [how] we need this to be as special to people when they watch it as the stuff that we watched when we were younger was to us. We don’t want to do this if we don’t think we can do Wes Craven justice.”

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Gillett continues, further revealing how the idea of fandom kept them on the right path when re-establishing Ghostface and the slasher world of Scream. “There was really some comfort in that, I think,” the filmmaker said. “Knowing that the movie itself was about fandom, I think that there was, there was an entry point for us that was really, really personal, and really emotional. The love letter of it was really real for us and was really easy for us to connect to.”

     Paramount Pictures

The fifth installment in the beloved slasher series, Scream picks up twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, Scream introduces a new killer, who has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) return to their iconic roles in Scream alongside Melissa Barrera, Kyle Gallner, Mason Gooding, Mikey Madison, Dylan Minnette, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Marley Shelton, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Sonia Ammar.

Scream was theatrically released in the United States on January 14, 2022, by Paramount Pictures. According to the reviews so far, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have seemingly succeeded in what they hoped to achieve with Scream, with critics praising the movie for honoring the legacy of Wes Craven’s and for its use of meta-commentary on the horror genre. So successful has the resurrection of Scream been in fact, that fans are already calling for Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett to return for Scream 6.