Scream 4 (2011)

Scream 4
 

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

(Liked It)

Netflix Synopsis: Perennial survivor Sidney Prescott, now a successful self-help author, returns to her home town of Woodsboro in the fourth act of director Wes Craven's Scream franchise. Sidney's homecoming, however, coincides with a slew of unsettling new murders.

The Peeps: Wes Craven (director); Kevin Williamson (writer); Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Emma Roberts

Quick Run Down:  Tongue in Cheek, Trying, Good Regurgitation

Worth The Watch?:  If you like the previous Screams, Yeah

Eleven years after Scream 3, the supposed last film of the franchise, comes Scream 4, complete with original director and writer.  I remember groaning when I heard about this, but I really didn't think much of it.  With the rash of remakes that has broken out along the skin of the horror scene (a list of which is quickly ran down during the film), I blew the installment off as a cash cow, figured it wouldn't be worth a damn, and went on my twisted way.  Seeing it on Netflix last month, though, I figured I'd give it a shot and, while I don't think I wasted any major part of my life, I wouldn't have been missing much if I had watched something else.

The 4th installment of the Sream franchise once again couples us with Sidney Prescott (an ever more attractive Neve Campbell) as she has finally gotten past her Ghost-Face days and has written a book called "Out Of Darkenss", a chronicle on her struggle with fear and so forth.  Her first stop on her book tour is, of course, her home town of Woodsboro.  She's flipping her hair and being all adult and accomplished like when a string of murders happen and the Ghost Face killer is on the loose again, tracking, stabbing, and murdering his way to the number one victim - Sidney.

There are only a few things in this film that make it stand out from the others.  Neve Campbell is one of them.  Not only has she gotten better looking over the years, her acting has taken on a certain charge.  It may be because she knows the Sidney character so well or that she's working with younger kids in the movie, but in Scream 4 there is a certain maternal, protective energy to her acting that makes it really good.  It's a minute thing and it certainly doesn't carry the film (esp. considering it's a horror movie), but I found it to be one of the more entertaining aspects of the movie.  The second thing that stands out is Williamson's script.  That's not to say that the script is good, but in 4, Willliamson once again amps up the movie references and almost makes the movie about movies, themselves.  You'll recall he did this with the first one, and he's really harks back to that here in the 4th.  Some of this is to the film's advantage (movie trivia and self-referential humor) but it also gets kind of whiny and defensive.  The opening - a movie within a movie within a movie - feels like the writer is saying that, no matter what this film does, you, as the viewer, still probably won't be scared because it's all been done before.  Granted, he's right, but at least make an effort to up the ante or something.  The finally mark of Scream 4 is that it's still Scream.  There's not a lot of difference between it and the first one, save originality and freshness in 1996, and though it's not a great film, maybe even just mediocre, it still provides the slight scare and murder/slasher mystery that the series has mostly held up through it's run.  I personally didn't think it was a bad film, a good overall installment, but nothing that did anything to move the franchise forward.  Regurgitated is the word that come to mind for describing it, but it's a good regurgitated, as oxymoronic as that sounds.

So if you want to watch a Scream movie that is just that, check out Scream 4.  There are only one or two minor scares and a few decent gore shots, but the film holds up to what the Scream franchise is all about.  Check it out.  It's on Netflix!

"Oh, and your lemon squares taste like ass!"