Sunday, April 14, 2013

Scream 4 (2011)

I kind of forgot about Scream 4 until it popped up on my Netflix instant queue.  I'm taking it easy this weekend, catching up on some blogging, and attempting to work on a cross-stitch project, which is a little difficult considering my younger cat is being ultra needy and will not leave my lap.  Oh, the things we do for our pets.

Scream 4 is chock-full of random stars, like these "reunion" sequels typically are.  We also get the return of Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette from the original Scream.  We kick off with sort of a movie within a movie.  Rachel and Chloe (Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell) are watching a Scream-esque movie where some teens are being killed by a mysterious caller.  Rachel complains about the stupidity of the movie, and Chloe stabs her repeatedly.  Turns out this is the trailer for Stab 7, which two teenagers are watching on a television shortly before they get killed by Ghostface.  Andddd, SCREAM 4, bitches.

Dewey is still a cop, now married to Gale, and Sidney is now a self-help author.  Sidney has returned to her hometown of Woodsboro as the last stop on her book tour.  Of course, as soon as she arrives, all hell breaks loose, with the murders once again occurring on the anniversary of the original incident.  The new high school clique comprises Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), Olivia (Marielle Jaffe), and Jill (Emma Roberts).  The connection is that Jill is Sidney's cousin, and is dealing with a betrayal from a boyfriend, much like Sidney in Scream.  The ex-BF even climbs in the same window as Billy did, as Sidney's aunt lives in her old house.  Thrown into the mix is a strangely-acting deputy, Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton), who claims to know Sidney from high school. 

We proceed with the typical Ghostface formula.  Creepy calls on the phone from other people's numbers, claiming to be nearby or watching.  Bloody and public deaths and narrow escapes.  Meanwhile, Gale has decided to partner with some high school news bloggers to try and crack the case.  The bloggers believe that the killer is modeling the murders after Stab Part 1, which makes sense as this movie itself is very reminiscent of Scream.  The whole movie continues pretty predictably, and the twist didn't come as a huge surprise, although I did like the "final battle," which did wrap it up fairly well.
 
Apparently Wes Craven said he would not return to the series unless the script was as good as Scream.  I can confidently say this story was actually quite similar to the original, but certainly not as good.  It was clearly supposed to be sort of poking fun at remakes, while kind of being one itself.  But I just had a hard time caring about anyone in this version.  Dodging murderers is just old hat for Sidney, and the teenagers this time around were annoyingly apathetic.  Gale and Dewey seemed to not even care for one another, and I thought that Judy would be part of the murders or something but she just sort of drifted around.  While I understand where they were going with this both as a franchise installment and a comment on the genre, I just can't say I loved it.  I think we've seen the last of the Scream sequels though. 

1 comments:

Hey! Look Behind You! said...

I enjoyed it for what it was but I hoped it would be the last out of the series.