Scream 4 – 3 out of 5
The initial Scream film felt like one of those “one and done” type of movies. That isn’t to say it is bad because I genuinely feel it is a genre-defining film that shook up the subgenre of horror that is the slasher film. However, it is very limited by the fact it is built upon the foundation of exploring, satirizing and honoring slasher tropes. Realistically, that can only take you so far before it starts to either get lazy and repetitive or feel like self-parody—which is what Scream 3 felt like. However, reboots and remakes exists and come with their own set of loose rules and, since horror films adopt and evolve with the times, even more rules come into play, so despite the franchise getting to a fourth film there was no doubt that Scream 4 definitely has some fertile ground to play with. Did it succeed? Kinda.
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| Spoiler Alert: Sidney was the killer in this one. I'm kidding...or am I? I am...or am I? |
Ghostface is back! 15 years after the original murders in Woodsboro, a new killer has put on the stupid costume and is calling people and asking them what their favorite scary movie is. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to her hometown to promote her book about the events but it seems she is once again targeted and so is her cousin Jill (Emma Roberts). With the help of Dwight “Dewey” Riley (David Arquette), Gale Weathers-Riley (Courteney Cox) and two high school movie fanatics; Charlie Walker (Rory Culkin) and Robbie Mercer (Erik Knudsen), the group hopes to find out who the new killer is but the rules are no longer the same as these killings are a reboot of the original…
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| "He keeps saying I'll be in a horror series that averages about 5 good episodes a season before it gets nearly unwatchable." |
Like I stated in the last sentence, Scream 4 is essentially a reboot of the franchise and acts as a refresher point for the story. Essentially, it’s the first film but for a new generation. In a way this works because acting as a reboot allows new tropes to exploit—both from the world of reboots and the world of remakes—but it also allows new blood to join the fray in a way that makes more sense than in the ways they’ve done in the other two sequels—especially the third one. However, this dynamic also runs the huge risk of feeling like a cash grab—something the horror/slasher genre is known for doing.
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| "I'm not touching you." |
Overall, I found Scream 4 to be a decent film that offers up a fairly entertaining story and, I will admit, it is a big improvement on the mess that was the previous film. The cast is great and the new members to the roster are all doing their jobs terrifically. I particularly enjoyed what Emma Roberts and Rory Culkin brought to the table as not only are their performances genuinely great but their characters offer up a new take on characters we already know and love from the franchise. However, this film just doesn’t have the kick or the same magic as the first film and ends up feeling more like it is just repeating itself rather than breathing new life into the franchise.
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| Look at Rory's gorgeous locks. Anyone else wanna see him shake his head back and forth in slow motion just to see his hair dance like a ballet dancer? Just me? |
Simply put, there are not enough “rules” and tropes of the reboot world for this film’s story to exploit. Additionally, not enough time has passed where the expectations of the slasher genre to have altered and created new guideposts to expect. There literally is a sequence where the movie buffs state that to live in the new world of slasher films is to be gay and later a character tries using this claim to stop Ghostface from killing them. At this point, the franchise feels like it is grasping at straws and trying to force movie clichés that aren’t strong enough to support a plot point.
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| This character with his headset that is live streaming his entire day definitely smelled of a writer who believed that kids really were doing this all the time with headsets. |
One element that has clearly run its course is the kills. Due to the more grounded nature of this slasher franchise, Ghostface’s kills have never really been that inspired and mainly are just of the stabbing nature with a knife. The last film tried to venture into new venues as the killer used a house full of natural gas to kill a character but that just ended up feeling ridiculous because of how it worked against the nature of the series and the fact the sequence required a lot of suspension of disbelief because the killer’s plan in that instance required a lot of variables to fall perfectly into place. I will grant that a kill or two in this one is cool but some of them are really silly and hard to take seriously. Overall, after four movies of watching the killer pretty much exclusively use a knife as their main weapon and not venture any further than some stabby-stabs, the formula has grown stale.
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| "I didn't stab you that hard. You're okay. Don't tell mom!" |
Scream 4 is serviceable but ultimately not as remarkable as the feature that kicked this whole franchise off. It’s doing some concepts very well, the new members to the cast are great and the returning ones are doing fantastic but there’s just not enough meat to chew on with this one. Matters aren’t helped at all thanks to a beginning that has too many Meta false starts that, by the time the first kill arrives, I was already on the verge of burnout and then there's an ending that just kept going and felt like it was never going to stop. Overall, it has some things working for it and some things that just simply weren’t and it made for an average, middle-of-the-road experience for me.
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