Did Scream ever leave the pop culture bloodstream? Two decades ago, its influence seemed oddly temporary we got only a few short years of revivalist teen slashers before the genre cycled back around to supernatural scares. Since then however Wes Craven and Kevin Williamsons 1996 meta homage has kept creeping back into the zeitgeist like that masked killer that just would not die. Beyond the periodic continuations and MTV adaptation the ghost of Ghostface rears its head any time a horror movie gets a little self referential or arranges a whodunit of potential hack and slashers. This past year or so has given us an official legacy sequel plus modern offspring like Bodies Bodies Bodies Werewolves Within and Netflixs Gen Z-courting Fear Street trilogy.
Sick a quippy zippy new slasher that premiered this week as part of TIFFs Midnight Madness slate, seems especially indebted to the blueprint of that post modern horror comedy mystery classic. Theres a very good reason for that: Williamson himself co wrote the screenplay with Katelyn Crabb. You can see his fingerprints on the material right from the jump, as a college student is stalked from a supermarket back to his dorm, and then fights a losing battle for his life against the mysterious black clad assailant a sequence that recalls the cold open bloodbaths with which most of the Scream movies commence minus much in the way of tongue in cheek movie trivia.
Though you could definitely call Sick a spiritual successor to Williamsons past franchise launching sensation it is not much interested in the film addled brains of the video store generation or even the modern equivalent of the same. The satirical target this time is sigh the age of COVID as experienced by a pair of coeds Gideon Adlon and Beth Million who head for a swanky secluded family lodge to isolate together in the spring 2020 only to find their lockdown mellow harshed by the arrival of a stabby interloper. Williamson has not lost his talent for writing spiky antagonistic teen banter but his commentary on pandemic life and specifically the moral imperatives of our new normal is irksomely muddled. By the end Sick flirts maybe jokingly maybe just accidentally with concluding that mask scolds are the true monsters of our moment.
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