Wes Craven’s Scream 4 Review

• 15th Apr 2011

It’s been 11 years since we last saw the post-modern horror movie-dissection slasher series tie its’ loose ends up. Now it is back in theatres and back in Woodsboro. The original film took apart the slasher franchise and set the rules of play – and then it bent and broke a few along the way, delivering us something fresh. The equally enjoyable sequel attacked, well, sequels – again providing a few surprises along with its commentary. The third part went after trilogies – and while it laid down the rules of a trilogy – it perhaps adhered to them a little bit too closely (in that the third part isn’t as good or as clever despite the surprises it tries to throw at us). In fact it even failed to live up to some of the expectations.  Like apparently the rules are out the window in a third film, so anyone can die and yet… all our heroes lived?

Now comes Scream 4. This time we are talking movie remakes (despite Scream 4 being a sequel) it does revisit many of the original films set ups and a few cute, noticeable similarities along the way in terms of the action and plotting.

Sidney Prescott has returned to finish a book tour she is on and finds her old friends Dewey and Gale not exactly having the time of their lives (Dewey though is now the town Sheriff, but Gale has all but abandoned her career). Then the murders start to happen again.

The opening set piece is fairly clever in what it is trying to do and uses many clichés in which to get there, but the scares are a bit same old. But the rest of the film suffers from a bit of the same old process too. While this is undoubtedly a Scream film, it is far too familiar to offer much in the way of surprise aside from the open and, perhaps, the end. So yes you get a ton of new characters – cops, students, reporters and publicists – all running through the motions until we arrive at the end showcase.

In between the killings there is much talk about remakes in the modern era, as well as other genres and even franchises of horror films that have been running amok for the past decade – but there are so many characters involved here that many rarely get the chance to make anything of themselves. Our three returning cast members do what they can with what they have, but even their screen time has been reduced which prevents us from having some of those nicer human moments with them that the original series at least stayed true to. Instead, we get many walk in and out characters as possible suspects, or as victims.

The majority focus seems to be on Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) and her best friend (Hayden Panettierre) the former is a bit rubbish; the latter of which probably is the most entertaining new character (which as an avid Heroes hater it pains me to say, but the girl was good – shame about the make-up though).

As with Scream 3, the new film finds it easy to talk the talk but hard to walk the walk. The film makes it’s point about re-makes largely being terrible, but then this fares not much better. Scream fans will enjoy the film as it is very familiar – but they won’t rank it high against the first two films. Not even close, but it does a job of diverting your mind for a couple of hours with some half decent humour and the odd bit of bloodletting ( be advised it is only 15 rating). So in every respect really, this fourth part has more in common with Die Hard 4.0 than any other fourth part. It’s not what it was, but is still part of the franchise – and now teenagers are welcome.

The critical response has been mixed from bad to not bad and it deserves what it is getting. It’s just a shame that in so many years that they couldn’t have twisted a few rules (perhaps ending on the first climax the film has instead of stretching into a second which would have given us something new). As to whether the franchise will “be right back,” well it depends on what kind of a killing it makes at the box office; or if it falls down dead itself.

Steven Hurst