10 Movie "Sequels" That Were Really Just Remakes
4. Scream 4
The "Sequel": As Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to Woodsboro as part of her book tour, another series of killings take place in the infamous town.
Why It's Just A Remake: Cleverly, in typically self-aware Scream fashion, Scream 4 revolves around a copycat killer rehashing the events of the first film, providing a healthy mix of expectation fulfillment and subversion of franchise tropes.
In attempting to kickstart a new trilogy, most of the new characters are basically archetypes from the first movie: Jill (Emma Roberts) is the new Sidney (Neve Campbell), Kirby (Hayden Panatierre) is the new Tatum (Rose McGowan), Charlie (Rory Culkin) and Robbie (Erik Knudsen) are basically Randy (Jamie Kennedy) split in two, there's even two new bumbling cops (Adam Brody and Marley Sharlton) like Dewey (David Arquette), and Rebecca (Alison Brie) is basically just a younger Gale (Courtney Cox). In addition, most of the kill scenarios and the final killer reveal feel extremely similar to the first movie.
Scream 4 gets away with going the remakequel route because while the core beats are the same as the first Scream, there's also enough self-awareness, contemporary technology and commentary on how the horror genre has changed since Scream 3 to make it a worthwhile update.