Scream 4 (2011)

by Steve Habrat

There is something intoxicating about a director who helped pioneer a certain genre way back in the day once again jumping behind the camera. I don’t care if he was making Alvin and the Chipmunks 6, if George “Night of the Living Dead” Romero is promised to direct, it’s a must see for me. But with the horror genre, it becomes something more of an event. It morphs into a holy pilgrimage for fans of the genre. Back in 2005, George Romero emerged from his crypt and served about a hearty dose of gore and stuck it to the hoards of wannabe zombie directors with Land of the Dead. Sam “Evil Dead” Raimi conjured up some demonic spirits in 2009 with the superb throwback Drag Me To Hell. There is just something about the living legend that gets me inebriated on excitement. That’s what I felt when I entered the theater to see Wes “Nightmare on Elm Street” Craven’s newest addition to his Scream franchise, Scream 4. If we stop to review Craven’s resumé, we will find it to be quite hit or miss. Name me a person who saw 2005’s Cursed and I’ll be pretty impressed. Or even last year’s 3D opus My Soul to Take! Yet the man has also provided the horror genre with the grungy grind house flick Last House on the Left and the clammy mutant extravaganza The Hills Have Eyes. Just to remind you, those came out in the 1970s. He’s also the man who is responsible for what I believe to be the most overrated horror film ever made, Nightmare on Elm Street, but that is an entirely different conversation all together.

It’s been eleven long years since Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson have crafted a self-aware stabbathon know as Scream for horror fans. I’ll be frank, it was long overdo, as horror is in such a sorry condition and the Scream films always seemed to be a cut and slash above the rest. So where did we end up in those eleven years that ol’ Ghostface wasn’t stalking a pretty young face around an empty house? Well, we are stuck in a perpetual cycle of reboots, remakes, and torture porn. Thank you, Saw. Funny enough, Scream 4 sets it sights on the Saw franchise in the first five minutes of the movie. It seems like Craven and Williamson were fed up with them too. But the film manifests itself into something else entirely: A brutal and bitter meditation on the current zeitgeist and Hollywood’s refusal to give something new to audiences. It’s just recycle and reuse according to Scream 4, but it also presents some spiffy little homages to the films that started it all and a true master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

The film commences with one of the worst opening bloodbaths of the series and then jets off to Woodsboro, the place where all the mayhem began. Sidney Prescott (Played by Neve Campbell, who is aging remarkably!) has returned home after eleven years to promote her new self-help book, Out of Darkness. She bumps into her now married old pals Gale Weathers (Played by Courtney Cox, also aging remarkably!) and Dewey Riley (Played by refined thespian David Arquette). Gale is a has-been journalist struggling with writers block and Dewey is now the dim sheriff of Woodsboro. Upon Sidney’s return, someone has donned the Ghostface mask and is taking aim at Sidney and her little cousin, Jill (Played by Emma Roberts). Of course, Jill and her group of friends are keen on horror films and the new rules to survive them. She gets lots of help from the horror-obsessed tomboy Kirby (Played by Hayden Panettiere, with what could be the worst haircut since Anton Chigurh stalked helpless victims in No Country for Old Men.) and two film nerds who run the film society at their high school, Charlie and Robbie (Played by Rory Culkin and Erik Knudsen).

Scream 4 ends up being a mixed bag. The film relentlessly globs on the self-awareness to the point where it becomes sickening for the audience and it’s more interested with being a comedy. There is barely a scare to be found this time around. Craven, however, lived up to his title of the Master of Suspense and does provide some brief moments of pure tension. But the film makes the grave mistake of confusing tension for scares and the tension is fleeting. The film’s most fatal error is the fact that it spouts off the formula for the new generation of horror films but rarely utilizes them. The characters constantly spew hollow mumbo jumbo about how the sequels and the remakes have to go a step further than the original. That’s all fine and dandy if Scream 4 actually took things a step further. Instead, it plays it safe and rarely strays from the original formula.

While the self-awareness weighs the film down, Scream 4 further self-destructs from it’s misguided profundity. It thinks it has something intelligent to say about social media, but instead it just becomes shameless plugs for iPhones. It’s clear that Williamson had absolutely no clue how to actually incorporate it into the film. The film further suffers from the fact that it has no idea what to do with Dewey and Gale. They appear to have only been incorporated to please the die-hard fans of the series, as they are given little to do. Gale stomps around spouting off flimsy one-liners about how she still “has it”. Dewey is reduced to rushing from crime scene to crime scene while looking horrified. The film also implies that they are having problems with their marriage—problems that are never revealed or that we could actually care about. The most glaring problem with the characters is Panettiere’s Kirby. She has to be the most unconvincing horror buff on the face of the earth. She rattles on about Suspira and Don’t Look Now when she seems like the type of girl who would know more about The Grudge 2.

For all of its flaws, Scream 4 gets a few things right. The film has some truly gruesome death scenes that are the best since the original film (This is a Scream film, people!). One scene in particular has a character get stabbed in the forehead and then trying to flee from Ghostface, who calmly walks along side watching the character bleed out and die. Unfortunately, the horror of the scene fizzles out with a crappy one-liner. The film does prove that it can run with the new line of splat pack gore fests. Italso comes equipped with snappy nods to classic horror films. One scene pays blood-spattered tribute to Hitchcock’s Rear Window and another scene tips it’s knife to Psycho. One character is even named Anthony Perkins! One scene in a hospital is eerily similar to the original Halloween II. This entry is probably the most successful in capturing the spirit of the original 1996 film that started all the slashing and gashing. The film refuses to conceal the bitterness from Craven and Williamson, as one character snarls to another, “Don’t fuck with the original”. It’s a line of dialogue that elicits some giddy snickers but also mirrors some frustration that I’m sure Craven has felt, as three of his classics have been remade for modern audiences.

To be fair, Scream 4 is a descent time at the movies. You will not walk away disgusted you just spent nine bucks on the movie. It provides some fun moments and it’s a blast to see Campbell chased around by the iconic killer again. I’m glad Craven and Williamson had the good sense to keep her front and center in all the bloody chaos. The outrageous finale also makes up for some of the film’s weaker moments. Scream 4 is a viciously average time at the movies and if Ghostface should return, as I’m sure he will, let’s hope that Williamson tweaks his script and shrinks his focus down, as this is an overly busy scattershot of a product. GRADE: C+

 

Scream 4 is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.