Wes Craven could have mailed it in with Scream 4 like he did last year with My Soul To Take. Thankfully, that last piece of garbage appears to be either an intentional laugh riot of awfulness, or a director taking a pay check biding his time. And if he was biding his time for a good script, he got one from Kevin Williamson.
The Ghostface Killer, Remixed
In Woodsboro, the home of the Scream series, two high school students are brutally murdered on the anniversary of the original Woodsboro murders. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), now an author, has returned to Woodsboro for a book signing on the same day. Obviously, this sets the entire “Here we go again” plot into motion, with some fresh new blood introduced with Sidney’s cousin, Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts), Kirby Reed, played to perfection by Hayden Panettiere, and Marnie Cooper (Brittany Robertson) as the younger generation.
So there are basically two sets of characters to follow, the newbies and the old cast, and this is played to great effect as the movie makes reference to it being a reboot, which means it has to be grander and even more brutal than the original, because that’s the rules. Having the old cast and newer cast discuss this about the movies today is one of those ironic nods that the franchise is known for, and it’s never been in better form than in Scream 4.
Speaking of original cast, Dewey (David Arquette) and Gale Weathers Riley (Courtney Cox) return and are now married. Dewey is the sheriff now, if you can believe that, and Gale has retired from reporting and is trying to write a novel to little success. Dewey is alerted to the killing of the two teens, and that the phone calls that opened the film in traditionally grand style were traced back to the book store area. In the meantime, Gale has decided to approach Sidney as a friendly, as she admires what it took for Sidney to turn her life around and write a novel about it.
Unfortunately, this brief bout of mutual respect is interrupted as Dewey and the gang in brown raid the book store. When they get there, Dewey calls the phone number that the killer used preceding the murder of the two teens. They follow the ring to Sidney’s rental car trunk, and thus Scream 4 begins in earnest.
Red Herrings A Go-Go
There’s a lot I could spoil, and I don’t want to do that, so I’ll just give an overview on why this film works, where it was so clear Scream 3 didn’t. Scream 3 didn’t work because the series had turned in on itself. The parody and irony were now working against the first two films. The series ate itself up, and there was nowhere to go but become a recycled, incoherent mess. And while I’ll take Scream 3 over almost any of the dreck released in its aftermath, it did not stand up to the high standard of the first two.
Scream 4 works on the level that they know that you know that they know what a horror film is. And they play comically into that, with characters making a mockery of the latter Stab sequels (the movie franchise based on the Gale Weathers books the Woodsboro Murders, which in fact is Scream). Throughout the film, including the genius opening scene, Stab is used as both a point of admiration and a point of contention between all characters.
The characters bring up how studios today will only remake or reboot horror franchises and won't support an original idea, how the rules of the reboot are that it must beat out the original while following the original base storyline. Which it turns out is exactly what Scream 4 is. A reboot, which has the characters following the template of the original Scream trying to up the ante. The fact that these characters know that’s what’s happening in the Stab universe, and we’re watching it happen through the Scream prism, gives a nice movie in a movie feel. More importantly, what it does is allow the carnage to be heightened to ridiculous proportions because we already have a rather bloody baseline expectation.
Having a general understanding of both the Stab franchise and the Scream franchise is simple, because they’re one and the same. The characters in Scre4m act as we would act in those same situations, since we know all about the rules of the horror film. Unfortunately, so does the killer. The interesting thing Craven has done here is he went with brute kills, not necessarily creative ones. This is intentional, I believe. Scream is known for its somewhat over the top slayings, yet Scre4m’s kills are more brutal and sudden in nature.
There are no prolonged chases, because that’s what we expect. He does the opposite, which is surprising since we’re trained by the horror film rules, which normally call for a skinny, big breasted girl to be running around for ten minutes at a time. Instead, cut that to two minutes with a rather barbaric gutting, and end scene. This serves to keep the audience off kilter, while still sort of in on the joke.
"Does That Mean I'm Not Gonna To Live As Long As These Two?"-Kirby Reed
Speaking of jokes, there are many in Scream 4, and most work extremely well (there is one by, surprise surprise, Anthony Anderson, that is beyond embarrassing, but the audience I was with seemed to like it). The usual name dropping isn’t really present like it was in Scream (remember Rose McGowan speaking of Wes Carpenter? Or Freddy the Janitor?) Instead, we get all that through the Cinema club at the high school. Robbie (Erick Knudsen) and Charlie (Rory Culkin) run the club, and they are the "Jamie Kennedy" character this go ‘round. They are film geeks, and they are horror aficionados who also happen to stream live to their blog non stop. This plays into the killer wanting to tape his killings as the next evolutionary step, but to go further would be to ruin the plot.
Special mention here to Hayden Panettiere, who is the female horror geek, and plays off the other characters marvelously. She’s the best actor in the film because she comes off as a real person. She has the perfect sarcasm and wit to bury her male costars, while playing off the good-looking girl stereotype. In one scene when she receives a phone call from the supposed killer, he attempts to ask her a movie question but she interrupts him, rambling off about a dozen or so old school horror films machine gun quick as potential answers. The other end of the line is silent. She says “It’s got to be one of them right? Right?!”
The other end is still silent, to her meaning she has beaten the killer at his own game, and it’s a funny moment mostly because of her reaction. Couple that type of scene with the words of wisdom from the two horror geeks and the new rules of horror, and the obvious love and adulation Craven has for old slasher flicks (we see posters of films plastered and shown prominently all over Scream 4), and you end up with a great return to form for Wes Craven and the Scream franchise, one which vaults it into the top five of horror franchises. This is Craven at his post Nightmare on Elm Street best, and it ranks directly beside Scream and Scream 2 as his best film since.
Double Feature With: Scream (1996)
- Film: 8/10
- So Bad It's Good: n/a
- Gore: 7/10 (plentiful but not all that inspired)
- Music: 6/10
