The success of Scream 2022 has led many Scream franchise fans to seek out directing team Radio Silence’s earlier works, so there’s no better time to rank their horror movies from worst to best. Even for optimistic horror fans, there was (until recently) good reason to believe that Scream’s 2022 reboot would be destined for failure. The fact that original series director Wes Craven passed away in 2015 meant that any replacement helmer would have a hard time taking the legendary filmmaker’s place.
However, Scream’s 2022 reboot proved a perfect tribute to Wes Craven and his legacy, as well as a fresh, funny, and original sequel in its own right. Never bogged down by fealty to the original Scream series, Scream’s 2022 reboot updated the franchise while also maintaining the delicate tonal balance between horror, character comedy, and meta satire that made Scream so successful in the first place. Of course, this came as no surprise to fans of the movie’s directors.
The horror filmmaking collective Radio Silence has been active since 2012 when they made their cinematic debut with a short in the successful anthology horror movie V/H/S. The group is comprised of producer Chad Villella and directors/writers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Before directing Scream’s 2022 reboot, Radio Silence came to prominence with their aforementioned V/H/S short, a later short in the underrated 2015 horror anthology Southbound, the 2014 feature film Devil’s Due, and the 2019 satirical horror hit Ready Or Not. That successful indie horror led to their hiring as Scream 2022’s directors, and for a good reason, as evidenced by a look back at their career in the genre so far.
V/H/S ("10/31/98")
The first major work from the Radio Silence team, the horror anthology V/H/S’s final short, 10/31/98, is a solid scare-fest that fits the movie’s found-footage aesthetic. However, while more inventive than most of the Paranormal Activity sequels, "10/31/98" lacks the satirical bite of the collective’s later outings. Credit where it's due, the premise of a group of gormless frat boys stumbling across an exorcism and endeavoring to save its subject is a great conceit. However, "10/31/98" works better as a great idea than a fully fleshed-out short. Although, its excised joke ending does provide the biggest laugh of the V/H/S franchise so far.
Devil’s Due
Smart and scary, Devil’s Due is a 2014 Rosemary’s Baby homage that suffers only in comparison to later Radio Silence productions and its famous inspiration. As famous fan Eli Roth noted at the rime of the movie’s release, Devil’s Due is a “legit scary, smart horror film” and a rare attempt to breathe new life into the “spooky unborn baby” sub-genre. However, while Devil’s Due is a worthwhile watch, the recent horror movie does struggle with a noncommittal, sort-of-found footage gimmick that adds nothing to the project.
Southbound ("The Way In")
Released in 2015, Southbound is a wildly underrated anthology horror that drew praise from no less than Paul Thomas Anderson. The horror put Radio Silence firmly on the mainstream map, as their short "The Way In" deserved. Like V/H/S, Southbound saves Radio Silence’s contribution for last and is right to do so; however, this time around, both the collective’s contribution and the surrounding movie's other shorts are stronger, stranger, and scarier. A fast-paced and terrifying home invasion thriller, "The Way In," serves as a precursor to the tense cat and mouse game Radio Silence later offered with the opening scene of Scream 2022.
Scream 2022
Speaking of the reboot, Scream 2022 was clever, funny, perfectly paced, and inventive. While many fans of the long-dormant franchise were understandably afraid that no new Scream movie could do justice to Craven’s originals, the Radio Silence team proved their doubters wrong with a story that managed to balance returning legacy characters with an engaging and believable cast of likable new leads. As far as sequels go, few (if any) could horror franchise reboots claim to have reignited interest in their respective series as much as Scream 2022 managed to. Despite killing off one of the franchise’s most beloved characters, Scream 2022 never felt gratuitous in its cruelty and managed to ground its gore amidst poignant character beats.
That said, even such a superior sequel was not perfect. There was room for a cameo from Mathew Lillard’s Stu Macher that went unrealized and, for all of the successful suspense sequences, Scream 2022 did lack the serious scares of earlier franchise installments. The thrilling chases could not quite match the gripping suspense of Scream 2’s car crash sequence, for example, or the legendarily harrowing opening scene of the original movie. That said, Scream 2022 remains a stellar example of rebooting a franchise without upsetting fans of the original movies, showing real love for the earlier outings while remaining endlessly inventive on its terms.
Ready Or Not
2019’s barnstorming blackly comic horror thriller Ready Or Not saw Radio Silence balance tense set-pieces, gory dark humor, and smart, uncompromising satirical writing. It’s a rare scary, gruesome, and endlessly original horror-comedy that does justice to both genres. Telling the story of the Le Domas family, Ready Or Not introduces viewers to new arrival Grace on her wedding day. To become a full-fledged member of the clan, Grace will need to win a parlor game played on her special day. Unfortunately for her, the game she ends up landing on is Hide and Seek, prompting the uber-rich family to take up arms and hunt her for sport to appease the devil that their ancestors made a dirty deal with generations earlier. As this synopsis implies, the class commentary in Ready Or Not is roughly as subtle as a brick to the face.
The movie is about the extremely wealthy playing with the lives of ordinary decent people and the heroine's struggle to survive their pitiless machinations. Embodied in The Babysitter star Samara Weaving’s resourceful heroine, the working class gets a killer Final Girl who is more than able to match wits with the soulless Le Domas brood and ends up beating them at their own game. Before that, though, Ready Or Not sees Radio Silence deliver thrills, brutal violence, high tension, and razor-sharp satire in the Scream 2022 directing team’s strongest effort so far.