A good review on metacritic by a user named Butterballer1

The original scream was a clever and refreshing spin on a forgotten or passe genre that had been totally left behind by Hollywood and audiences. Its humor and pacing were nearly perfect. Wes Craven's script and direction provided interesting characters that engaged you along with suspense, humor, action, and thrills that all hit the mark. The actors--while not entirely perfect, were all excited about the material and interesting as characters providing memorable performances that last to this day in viewers' minds--especially the baddies and weirdos. The twist in the film rivaled Shyamalan in The 6th Sense.

This film lacks all but a hollow shell of parts of that film while providing nothing to care about for the returning characters who are also hollowed out.

A climactic scene goes from noon to midnight after a 2-minute drive to a hospital that has 0 staff or patients or security system. A wheelchair cripple can barely roll herself one foot forward, but stands beats up a killer at the end of the film. This film tries to be subversive--but not to the establishment that is ruining clever and original films like the original Scream was. Instead, this film seeks to subvert Scream itself by punching down at its own fans and fans of franchises in general. It goes out of its way to attack the very people who support it. It is a parasite.

Anything can be funny, but not when you have wooden and empty characters delivering several agonizingly dull multi-minute expository monologues to make up for the heavy 'messaging' and poor script. Suspense and visuals are everything in horror. The endless exposition seriously destroys this film. Only one or two of the characters are remotely likable. NONE of them have the charisma of Matthew Lillard or Courtney Cox and David Arquette (whose legacies are both tragically mistreated and thrown away here. Scream 5 **SPOILER ALERT** brags about debasing David Arquette INTENTIONALLY identically to Han Solo in The Force Awakens and praises its director. Dewey has somehow become a white alcoholic recluse loser in a trailer who gave up on his big-boss-lady Gale after only 2 months after the previous film. This is revolting, but also completely uncharacteristic of Dewey to be this way. Like all woke films today, he is emasculated and then thrown out with the trash. They kill him off for absolutely no reason, making him a complete idiot in a way that is completely out of character for him. This is when any mild or serious fan will give up on this film. Yet there's probably 30 minutes of film remaining after this.

Dewey is the everyman that is kind-hearted and a throughline that helps you care about any of these characters' stories after multiple films. This film sets up 0 characters that you will care about. Instead, you WANT them all to die throughout the film as they are directed and cast poorly. Finally, in this film, almost NO ONE DIES except white characters. When this fact is considered with all the other criticisms of this film, it is undeniable that the creators of this film placed ESG WOKE scoring high above any artistic merit.

Wes Craven was a master of horror because he understood the value of a good script. He also knew how to organize all the people in Scream in a way that sucked the viewer into the movie, thrilled them, and made them laugh and be moved enough by some fleshed-out and likable characters, despite the nature of the genre of the film. He also punched UPWARD at the establishment, at himself, and at political correctness. This film tried desperately to somehow be politically correct while being a violent uninspired slasher film that has no clever kills. In fact, almost NONE of the young cast gets killed because--surprise surprise--they are all too diverse to be allowed to die, except the white ones. None of this would matter if it was MOCKING woke culture in some way, but it isn't; it is EMBRACING it, and it lets you know this over and over again as it beats you over the heads with terrible meta-meta-meta dialogue attacking its fans and everything good about the original film.

Also, Billy Loomis is somehow brought back in generic scenes that were probably filmed in his bathroom basement on a cell phone with a scary de-aging face applied to them. The people making this film knew they needed the original cast, but didn't want to utilize them properly or 'pass the torch.'

Scream gave Neve's Sidney a clear relatable heroic journey. It was already pro-female back in the 90s (many films were) and everyone loved it because it placed all of its artistic storytelling elements above any politics the director may have been trying to convey. It was just a great film that men and women both loved that empowered women as it empowered anyone who loves a good hero's journey. Scream 5 on the other hand is a bad film all around that tries to manufacture 'stakes' by killing the one character that still gave these films any heart.