Scream 4
Scream 4 reunites director Wes Craven (who has hit hard times creatively since the original Scream series ended back in 2000), screenwriter Kevin Williamson (although according to reports, screenwriter Ehren Kruger did some rewrites), and lead stars Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette. The film even returns to the setting of the original film, the quaint little town of Woodsboro, where it all began. The movie is at least self aware that a little over 10 years have passed since the last film. After all, being self aware is a big part of the success of this franchise. The original film delighted in putting characters who were fans of slasher movies, and well versed in their conventions and cliches, and sticking them into a real life one, with the characters making the same mistakes the ones in their favorite movies do. (I still remember the scene where a guy is watching the original Halloween, and is yelling at Jamie Lee Curtis on the TV to turn around, as the killer was behind her, completely unaware that there was an actual killer standing right behind him as he watched the movie.) The idea worked well in that film, but three sequels later, the joke is pretty much played out. And despite the best efforts of the cast and crew, this new film just elicits yawns instead of thrills.
The film at least starts out promisingly enough, with series heroine Sidney Prescott (Campbell) returning to her hometown in order to plug a book she's written about overcoming the various turmoils she has faced during the earlier three movies. Somehow, she's been able to move on from having everyone close to her get butchered by various psychos wearing a Halloween costume, and is ready to share her inspiring story with the world. Of course, as soon as she returns to the town of Woodsboro, new murders start popping up. Someone is once again dressing up in the Grim Reaper-style outfit (known affectionately to fans as "Ghostface"), and killing the people around Sidney. This does not bode well for Sidney's young cousin, Jill (Emma Roberts), nor many of her teenaged friends, which include closet film buff Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), next door neighbor Olivia (Marielle Jaffe), Jill's ex-boyfriend Trevor (Nico Tortorella), and school film geeks Robbie (Erik Knudson) and Charlie (Rory Culkin). It doesn't help that these kids have a bad habit of staying on the phone line when there's a scary voice on the other end, or going in dark places they really shouldn't. Must be something they pass down to their kids over in Woodsboro.
In a subplot, Sidney's old friends Dewey Riley (Arquette) and Gale Weathers (Cox) are still living in Woodsboro and married, though not exactly happily. Dewey is now the Sheriff, and seems to be spending a lot of time flirting with the female deputy (Marley Shelton), a plot that is dropped almost the instant it's brought up. As for Gale, she's out of the news business, but longs for the days when she used to investigate the crime stories she was covering. The new series of murders gives her that chance, as she sets out on her own to do a private investigation. I can picture all of this working, but that would require a screenplay that was actually interested in following what the characters have been up to in the past 10 years or so. Scream 4 is not, unfortunately. The characters are hollow shells of who they used to be, and while some interesting ideas are tossed out there (such as the marriage turmoil between Dewey and Gale), the movie doesn't follow through. Maybe the filmmakers were worried about the real life turmoil that's been following Arquette and Cox in their relationship? Whatever the case, it feels like a lost opportunity for some much needed character development.
Instead, we get the characters making a lot of references and jokes about current horror films, "torture porn", and being self aware a lot. While humor has always been an element to Scream, I think this movie plays up the jokes more than I remember in the earlier films. The opening sequence (which is basically a movie-within a movie-within a movie gag) comes dangerously close to spoof territory. It's not just the fact that a lot of the jokes fall flat, but it also pretty much kills any tension the movie tries to create. Truth be told, the gags in this one just aren't that clever, the most desperate being that one of the characters is named Anthony Perkins. Funny names are seldom funny, and come across as being just stupid in a thriller. The one joke that did make me laugh is when the characters are talking about the declining quality of the Stab films, a series of fictional slasher movies based on the Woodsboro murders, and how the series hit rock bottom when they introduced time travel to the plot in Stab 5. (The series is currently up to 7, we learn.)
The real problem with Scream 4 is that it tries too hard to capture what made the first movie work. The original seemed effortless, while this one seems labored and playing up the gags and the references to other horror movies too hard and too often. It comes across more like a cry of desperation from the filmmakers, rather than a movie that needed to be made. Rather than revisit the characters we have come to love, or address them in interesting ways, the movie simply regurgitates the old formula, puts some new faces in (none of whom are developed in any interesting way, and exist simply to get stabbed by Ghostface), and expects to win us over with nostalgia alone. That's not enough, especially with a screenplay this thin. Once the novelty of seeing these characters again 10 years later fades, there's simply not much of a story to tell.
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