So ruminating on this, especially in comparison to the other nostalgia fuelled busters of blocks we've had recently, and I think the issue with the film is solely in its legacy.
Remove the OG characters and the links to the past movies, but keep everything else - masked killer, smart arse teens, even some of the more....questionable character beats (Melissa Berrera's odd heritage), and call it Summer of Slasher (or some other non-descript title) and the film improves.
Sure the kills are still patchy and I'm not sold on the parody vs meta line (which is still crossed far too often for me), but without the weight of the past (ironically for this franchise, I'm very aware!) this becomes a Blumhouse generic teen fodder flick and its perfectly serviceable.
But you call it Scream, you tie it to that legacy - a legacy of doing something new and different with most entries (sure Scream 3 was way to funny but it moved to the production side of Hollywood and the prescient seedier side of how that used to work, while Scream 4 took to social media in the absolute right way in terms of an update) - then expectations instantly jump.
And I've said all I want to about the treatment of the OG characters - sure, its obviously very personal but on this week's re-watch of Scream 2, when Dewey's theme first plays out, I got actual goosebumps (which I VERY rarely do), but when the film was sold on them being the main characters (top billing, the only cast faces on all the recent marketing blitz) again, expectations were set that they would actually be the films leads.........
So yeah. I understand how some will score this higher - as I said, its a perfectly serviceable if patchy remake of the first film. But for ME, with MY attachments to the franchise, this needed to be different and it needed to be better. And it was neither. So sorry y'alls, I kinda hope that the obvious sequel baiting of our new lead's personality 'trait' setting us up for further adventures with Ghostface never sees the light of day even though I desperately want good Scream films. Which most had been up until now........