I don't care how much Kevin Williamson praises Scream 5, I found it disappointing. It has waaaay too strong fanfiction taste to it; as much as I love Billy Loomis and appreciate that Skeet Ulrich returned to the role, I found it rather cringey how they wrote the character in, as well as that the new main character is his daughter, and apparently the predisposition towards violence/murdering just won't skip a goddamn generation in that family.
I mean, logically it all works, but that's all literally something I might have written as Scream fanfiction when I was 14. I simply expect better and more originality from a fanfiction that is made in a Hollywood movie format instead of being a story on an online site.

Also, all of the killers' motives from Scream 1 through 4 were deeply psychological and mostly related to Sidney's family. Now it's all about radicalised fans of movies? It was already fanficton enough, couldn't you at least make the motives something not cringey and more mature and meaningful?

For me, Scream 5 simply fell so far below the standard of the movie franchise that I decided fanfiction isn't worth payong for in this case. And I didn't, I made use of Paramount+'s free trial to watch Scream 5. Likely won't be watching Scream 5 even for free, or anything that comes after it.

Because, also, it seems the canon characters seem to be in the process of getting phased out completely. Seeing to that they're now referred to as "legacy characters" and how Sidney stated its Sam's story now or something. So, if the series isn't even going to include any of the original characters anymore it really isn't worth my time even for free.

I don't mean to be overly negative. Scream 5 wasn't the worst, it was entertaining enough for a free view but not enough for me to watch anything more. It's just that, to me, Scream = Kevin Williamson. And I don't understand why he didn't write the script, continue his story, when obviously a studio was willing to fund another movie. I mean, he has said the trilogy 4 to 6 is all in his mind so it's not as if he didn't have a vision.

Though, I do acknowledge not all of his own visions are that great either, I was absolutely horrified when I heard what his idea for Scream 3 was. It made me actually appreciate the Scream 3 we got instead, quite a bit even though I still don't fully like it. But my point is, even shitty canon is better than average and self-aware fanfiction, in my opinion.

I'm actually amazed how a man who wasn't a fan and didn't even want to write a Scream script, (talking about the writer of Scream 3), managed to write a stronger core storyline than the canon creator himself (Kevin Williamson's own idea for Scream 3) or supposedly passionate fans (the writers of Scream 5.)

My head-canon continues acknowledging only Scream, Scream 2, and Scream 4 and I won't waste any more of my time on further installments on a movie series that has now become pure fanfiction forever.