It’s quite telling when the best scene in your movie isn’t even from your own movie. When a clip is shown early on from Shaun of the Dead, I felt a burst of both enjoyment and frustration. Enjoyment because, well, it’s Shaun of the Dead. The overbearing frustration came from the fact that the movie I was watching was Scream 4.
This fourth installment is only a surprise in the sense that it didn’t continue the downward spiral of the series, but lets face it, surpassing the third film is about as easy a task as one could get.
The fact that the fourth is nearly on the same level as the third comes as a real disappointment, considering how director Wes Craven wisely kicks off the film with a compelling bang. The once-reliable filmmaker, and his film, seems aware of how ridiculous and usually bad sequels past the third film mark get, but, by the end, Scream 4 becomes one of those films it’s trying to rip apart. There’s a constant mockery and deconstruction of horror conventions, as expected, and hardly any of its artificial smarts work.
When Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns back home to Woodsboro, she’s turned a new page in her life. Sidney has a new book coming out and everything seems to be going just dandy, but how long will this happy streak last for? Obviously, not for long. “Stab” inspired serial killers have returned for another go, and their shocking targeted victim: Sidney and what’s left of her family, including her rarely seen aunt (Mary McDonnell) and cousin Jill (Emma Roberts). New rules have entered the killers’ game because of the updated horror cliches and Sidney, with her old gang, must learn these 21st century rules to survive.
Every “witty” joke comes off as obvious and obnoxious. The whole film is a major contradiction. Craven and co. make fun of the stupidity of horror tropes, while falling into plenty others themselves. This is a horror film where people don’t act like people, but instead what the horror set-pieces need them to be. Craven didn’t set up a world intended for logical thinking by rational people. Each character is an irritating body bag that you can’t wait to see gutted if only so the film can get closer to the end.
The ensemble is off-putting due to their pure stupidity and lack of basic human skills. Horror vet Campbell is comfortable in the role of Sidney Prescott, but, like the rest of the cast, she’s stuck in a role that consistently requires having to sell stupid decisions as human logic. It’s as if screenwriter Kevin Williamson, or most likely the re-writer Ehren Kruger (the man behind Scream 3, Reindeer Games and many other disposable films), made it an imperative goal to have a character make a plot-convenient choice every 10 minutes.
With each new kill, Craven furthers my theory that he despises teenagers as much as I do. Craven interjects the annoying girls, the obsessive film nerds and other tired cliques. And they all happen to be young, good looking white kids. How original and meta, right? The horror movie nerds are basically a combo of Jamie Kennedy‘s Randy Meeks, except totally unlikable. No one in the cast is interesting enough to latch on to or care about. They are all either boneheaded, underwritten or unneeded. The only one that survives the pitfalls of the script is Alison Brie, who brings a genuine sense of life to the film whenever she’s onscreen, which is sadly sparse.
Scream 4‘s final result is similar to giving a pack of film nerds 40 million dollars to make a film based on their tedious and half-baked conversations on the horror/meta-horror genre. Nothing new is being said or done with Scream 4. The first Scream film broke barriers, this one lazily treads over them. A strong set-up quickly gets diminished by uninspired writing, cheap scares and a third act that couldn’t possibly get any more goofy. Starting off with Drew Barrymore‘s iconic first scream fifteen years ago, this iteration only lets out a frustrating whimper.