By industry standards, horror movies are incredibly profitable and relatively cheap to make, and they can more than rake in over twice their budget. Hollywood has consistently churned out a steady stream of horror films every year, some to much acclaim and some to not so much as a fizzle at the box office.

Today, slasher flicks are experiencing a serious comeback thanks to the nostalgia-craze that has taken over the multiplex. It can be argued that this renaissance began with 2018's Halloween, a direct sequel to the original movie where Jamie Lee Curtis reprised her iconic scream queen role. The success of this franchise sequel had an undeniable domino effect in the slasher flick genre; between 2018 and 2022, audiences were treated to a whole range of legacy horror movies redefined for a new generation.

Scream 5 (aptly titled Scream) is the latest franchise to join the bandwagon. But what makes this movie different from others that came before it is the fact it's incredibly hyper-aware of the current state of Hollywood.

*Spoilers ahead*

One Last Hurrah

Neve-Campbell-Courteney-Cox-Scream-5
Paramount Pictures

Scream 5 features almost all of its legacy characters (even those who perished in previous installments), and while some may have more to do than others, these characters are brought back to much fanfare. Sidney gets to wield a gun again, and Gale Weathers is back with her quippy one-liners. It's as if we're back in the late '90s (minus the bad lighting, of course). What Halloween and Scream 5 do for the slasher flick genre is revived interest in these time-tested stories. True, the directors and producers chose to ignore some not well-reviewed installments in their respective franchises, but audiences love revisiting these worlds, and Hollywood is beginning to understand this.

Following the Star Wars formula of bringing back OG actors for one last hurrah, horror film execs are reigniting old stories and colliding them with the modern world of smart tech and social media. In the case of Halloween and Scream, this method worked; but other franchises have not been as lucky.

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The Final Girl Problem

Laurie Strode Halloween 2018
Universal Pictures

The majority of '80s/'90s slasher flicks ended with a final girl. Halloween had Laurie Strode, Alien had Ripley, and Scream had Sidney (we could go on-- Texas Chainsaw, Friday the 13th, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc.), but what happens now? At the end of Halloween Kills, the stage was set for a bloody showdown between Laurie and Michael. It's anyone's guess where the franchise will go from there. Yes, they introduced a new generation of characters, but are fans really invested in them? Aren't the stars of the show the final girls, along with their shot at another chance of vengeance and survival? Scream 5 balanced this relatively well, but some critics noted that Neve Campbell could have been given more to do than just bookend the film. One franchise that is truly reinventing the formula is Child's Play.

The film reboot starring Aubrey Plaza was not received well, and its box office showed this (Child's Play's original creators had nothing to do with the film), but the SyFy show Chucky, now renewed for season 2, has done much, much better. The reason for this success can be chalked up to the fact that the creators went beyond the final legacy characters while still honoring their presence in the franchise. Andy (played by Alex Vincent) is still present in the show, and Jennifer Tilly (who plays Tiffany Valentine) is given a lot to do in the series. This is the fine line that slasher flicks post Scream 5 need to walk on.

Related: Leatherface is Unleashed in New Trailer For Netflix's Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The nostalgia trip is not losing steam anytime soon. Netflix will be releasing a direct sequel to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre featuring the return of Sally Hardesty, a survivor from Tobe Hooper's 1974 genre-defining film. We're yet to see if this will perform well, but it's intriguing how almost every horror intellectual property has revived its original characters to clash with villains of yesteryear.

Halloween 2018 showed audiences that, if done right, legacy characters can bring a lot to the table. This year's Scream moved past this notion and established the fact that it's necessary to kill off certain legacy characters to move past the shackles of nostalgia. Seeing as Scream 6 has been greenlit, Hollywood seems to have figured this out, and writers seem to be finally moving away from hyper-focusing on legacy characters for the sake of cheap thrills.

If done right, audiences could be entering the era of slasher flicks with new stories to tell within the worlds that have undoubtedly stood the test of time.