Mania Grade: C

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Info:

• Starring: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin and Hayden Panettiere
• Written by: Kevin Williamson
• Directed by: Wes Craven
• Studio: Dimension
• Rating: R
• Run Time: 103 minutes
• Series:

Mania Review: Scream 4

Scream 4
© Dimension Films/Robert Trate

 BIAS ALERT: I was never a huge fan of the original Scream movies, so the chances that this fourth entry – delivered over a decade after Scream 3 – would win me over were small in the extreme. I found the earlier films unconscionably smug, with a condescending attitude towards the very film geeks at which they supposedly aimed their vastly overrated commentary. Scream 4 doesn’t improve much on that equation. Everyone’s older, everyone’s a little more tired, but they’re definitely dancing with the gal that brought them. Even if you’re a fan, you can feel the franchise fatigue setting in.

On the plus side, it’s never stupid. Director Wes Craven has been at this game far too long to phone it in, and even at his worst, he’s steadfastly devoted to the cause. Scream 4 benefits from some interesting concepts, a few good one-liners and a cast thoroughly enjoying their victory lap. Neve Campbell returns as plucky heroine Sidney Prescott, now a successful self-help author who comes back to Woodsboro for a book signing. There, she reconnects with Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) – still a well-meaning lunkhead – and his wife Gale (Courteney Cox) – still an ambitious bitch – as well as a gaggle of next-generation slasher fodder led by Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts).  Before too long, someone shows up in the Ghost Face mask, butcher knife in hand, to carve a slice out of the local teens. He’s happy to include the Old School Trio in that equation as well.

Craven takes advantage of the fact that this is presumably the very last in the franchise. We don’t know if Sidney, Gale or Dewey are going to survive this round, and the resulting suspense keeps the film from succumbing to undue sequelitis. It also keeps the series’ signature winks to the audience intact, with amusing cameos from Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell as the stars of a movie-within-a-movie based on Sidney’s earlier scrapes. Though the film definitely constitutes a celebration of itself more than a genuine effort, the filmmakers work hard to keep energy and interest levels high.

Unfortunately, like its predecessors, it still mistakes terminal self-absorption for the high-minded deconstruction fans ascribe to it. The Scream franchise never had any real interest in examining the tropes of horror movies or breaking them down to see what makes them tick. Instead, it just snidely points out the clichés before diving headlong into them, serving up the usual cocktail of clueless teens and an omnipotent killer who can strike at any moment. It drops plenty of names of other horror movies in the process, but doesn’t talk about why they’re great: only when they came out, who starred in them and other bits of trivial minutia that it mocks its presumed audience for caring about.  

Under that formula, repetition soon sets in, and the in-joke sheen becomes an excuse for by-the-book scares rather than a means of elevating the proceedings. None of the characters retain the slightest bit of sympathy save for Sidney herself, whose bland decency continues to defy all efforts at engaging with her. (Indeed the most dynamic character interaction is unfortunately based in real life: the dissolution of Cox and Arquette’s actual marriage creates a chill between them that becomes uncomfortable to watch.) Without more traditional elements to cling to, we have to fall back on the Meta… which previous Scream entries have long since mined of its already meager rewards.

Craven knows better, of course, and the great frustration of this – one of his signature franchises – is that he should have knocked it right out of the park. Scream 4 is willing to swing for the fences, and its reliance on formula produces a mild share of fun moments. But never enough of them and none sufficient to render this more of a reunion tour than a real movie. Of all the horror clichés it presumes to send up, it misses the most obvious one: the point where a franchise has nothing left to say and just keeps going in order to cash a check.