Scream 4 (56%)

Director: Wes Craven     Cast: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox     Genre: Horror/Comedy

Runtime: 111 minutes     Release Date: April 15, 2011     Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1

Back in 2011 I couldn't be more excited for Scream 4 to hit the theatres. I was a big fan of parts one and two but thought things had faltered a bit with the third part. So 11 years after the third entry Wes Craven, the main principle cast and original screenwriter Kevin Williamson all came together to bring the world Scream 4.

Walking out of the theatre that fateful day I couldn't believe what I had just seen. More accurately I couldn't believe how disappointed I was. I had hated the film. Was this some kind of cosmic joke brought to us by Dimension Films? How could everyone involved in the modern classic that was Scream be part and partial to this piece of crap.

That's what I thought on April 15th, 2011 as I left the theatre on opening night and I haven't seen the film (up until last night) since. I have not wanted to and to be honest I was dreading watching it again. But I finally did (and finally finished the films of Wes Craven) and I still found it to be a pretty bad movie. But to my surprise it wasn't as bad as I had first thought. I guess the first time around I must of been soured by expectations that were nowhere close to being met.

Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to Woodsboro promoting her new book. The moment she arrives people start dying, with the Ghost Face copycat killer seemingly targeting Sydney and her cousin and all those around her. Together with Dewey (David Arquette) and Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) they attempt to find the culprit before they and everyone they know is stabbed to death.

The Good:

The film opens with two girls alone in their house. It is very reminiscent of the opening of Scream 2. Before long they are tormented on the telephone by a new Ghost Face and are soon quickly dispatched in grisly stabbing fashion. The title appears on screen and low and behold it is Stab 6 that we were watching, the fake movie within a movie based on Scream.

We see that it is actually two girls who are watching Stab 6 and one of them starts ranting about how she thinks it's a stupid movie, horror movies are stupid, etc., yadda-yadda-yadda. The other girl gets fed up and stabs her friend in the stomach over and over. The title appears and this time we see we are watching Stab 7.

This opening is the best part about Scream 4. A movie within a movie within a movie where on each level it references itself, the real films and the fake films. It's awesome, it's well written, it's clever and it's damn funny. It is also very much what I would expect from the Scream franchise. Sadly though the film goes downhill from there.

The Bad:

The first bad moment is the second death which occurs maybe three minutes after the wicked opening. A girl is stabbed in the back and crawls her way across her garage floor. She gets half way under the garage door when Ghost Face pushes the garage door button. The world's slowest garage door then causes some serious damage to her back which makes no sense and that's not even mentioning the fact that garage doors have fail safes to prevent such things from happening.

What follows is over an hour and a half of generic slasher moments that aren't as thrilling or original as the first, second or even third film. It's also not as clever as the original(s) and not as sharply written and for the most part the humour falls flat. It's also kind of predictable with the killer being very easy to guess about 25 minutes into the film.

Then there is the cinematography which in the past three films has been stellar. Here it is overly dark for no reason but to keep suspension in the air. It doesn't work at all. Instead I was thinking the whole time that the film was way to dark. Hallways are so dark you can't see who's in them, even though the lights are on. People in cars can barely be seen and hospitals are so dark it's amazing that anyone can get any work done there.

Is Scream 4 at least scary? Not in the least. Unlike the earlier films, this one has no characters you learn to care about; no real investment is given to them and therefore I could care less if they live or die. This along with the fact that it's predictable and just feels like more of the same, the scares just don't come at all.

The first and second films were all about 'rules' of slasher films and were fun to watch them play out with the characters who believed they knew better. Here they say there are no 'rules' or there are 'rules' but they can be broken which in the end makes for no 'rules' and for a subpar Scream film. As does the fact that characters appear in places suddenly if for no other reason than to mislead the audience as to who the bad guy is.

The Ugly:

Jill (Emma Roberts) has an ex named Trevor, played by Nico Tortorella. She receives a phone call from his phone, only it is Ghost Face calling. She is attacked and narrowly escapes with Ghost Face running out the front door. Seconds later Trevor runs right into the house to console her. He is never questioned by the police, she never questions why he was there so quick and the whole idea just doesn't sit well with me.

That type of thing happens a hell of a lot more in this film than it should, especially with the killer. It makes no sense how the killer moves from place to place in such short amounts of time. Even once you find out who the killer is it still doesn't answer how they can move from a party, to a house, to a hospital, to a parking garage, to anywhere in the short amount of seconds that they do.

The thing that bothered me the most the first time I saw this film and still bothered me here was the whole 'meta' self referencing thing. In the first film Randy is the one who speaks the rules and is the one that really makes the self aware aspect come alive. In the second film it is spread to a university class studying film. Here it is everywhere and spoken by everyone. Every character has at least one line that says 'if this was a movie' or 'that is so meta' or 'the rules state'. It's overbearing and annoying!!

One final thing to say before I wrap this up. At Stabathon (an annual festival where all seven Stab films are shown in Woodsboro) the hosts talk about a drinking game where every time a certain event happens you take a drink. Some of those events have slipped my mind but one that I do remember is take a drink every time an innocent character pops up behind a fridge door for a cheap scare. Well all I can say is that Scream 4 is a movie that is literally full of those moments, which to me says the film is succumbing to a level of genericness that the first films tried so hard to escape.

The Verdict:

Scream 4 ends up being a rather large disappointment. It is a film that ultimately is as generic as the first film made fun of and subverted. Besides the opening few moments this film feels stale and old, stupid and nonsensical, unscary and unfunny. It is overdone and overblown and is exactly the reason why horror films in the 80's had such a bad rap. It's never outright boring and it's bloody enough but as it played out all I could think of was 'I'd much rather be watching the original'. Unless you are a Craven completist or doing a Scream marathon I would recommend that you stay way from this one, unless of course you are a sucker for disappointment.

Recommendation: Scream

           Re-playability: 4 out of 10     Directing: 5 out of 10     Originality: 2 out of 10                 

Costumes and Make-up: 8 out of 10     Acting: 7 out of 10     Editing: 6 out of 10

Cinematography: 4 out of 10     Music: 6 out of 10     Script: 3 out of 10

         Production Design (Sets/Locations/Special Effects): 7 out of 10                  

Total Score = 52%