Before there was torture porn, human centipedes, and creepy kids crawling out of TV screens, there was a little 1996 movie called Scream. And before there were all those Scary Movie parodies poking fun at the film, Scream was already taking jabs at itself and all the slasher films that came before it. It was this melding of stock horror movie conventions (killer chases girl, girl has badly timed bout of clumsiness and face-plants, killer finishes girl) and film-geek commentary that defined the Scream franchise. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Scream became this generation’s slasher movie, with the Ghostface killer as readily recognizable as Freddy or Jason.
But in Scream 4, that signature self-aware snark is turned all the way up to eleven. The cheeky self-referential quality of the three previous films becomes annoying in this latest installment, and in all the meta midst, the film loses what had made the Scream franchise a bloody fun time.
All of the familiar faces are back (well, the alive ones anyway). Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), the not-so-distressed damsel who’s survived a trilogy’s worth of nut-bags wielding kitchen knives, is now an author, and it’s her book tour that lands her back in her old hometown of Woodsboro. Conveniently, she arrives just in time for the tenth anniversary of the original murders. There, Sidney reconnects with the now married ex-reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and dopey Dewey Riley (David Arquette), upgraded from deputy to sheriff, and the original trifecta is complete. Like a plague, Sidney’s arrival prompts a slew of deaths at the hands of good ol’ friend Ghostface, and the bloodbath quickly begins.
The film is jam-packed with fresh meat, thanks to the inclusion of Sidney’s young cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) and her circle of friends, most notably Hayden Panettiere and Rory Culkin. There are constant cameos by a who’s who of young Hollywood, with Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Adam Brody, Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) and Alison Brie (Community) all making appearances. With all the youngins comes the desperate attempts at hipness, with forty-something writer Kevin Williamson and septuagenarian director Wes Craven flinging in frequent mentions of Facebook and iPhone apps, name-dropping Twitter, Wii and Channing Tatum like it’s a part-time job. Craven has characters tweet, stream and upload with wild abandon, like a middle-aged dad eagerly trying to prove his coolness to his kids. Like the film itself, it doesn’t work well.
In reviving the franchise, the filmmakers marketed Scream 4 as the ever vague “reboot,” but the film clumsily walks the line between remake and sequel (or “scream-make” and “shriek-quel,” as the film says, drowning in its own cleverness). There are frequent homages and nods to the original Scream, with newbies dying similar deaths (that damn garage door strikes again) and touting themselves as the new Sidney or Billy Loomis, Sidney’s boyfriend from the original.
And yet Scream 4 eschews any of the character development of the former films (what little there was) in favor of this extreme ego-stroking. The movie bleeds self-awareness, all exaggerated winks and in-jokes, constantly trying to one up itself with how cerebral and clever it can be (the ‘movie within a movie within a movie’ bit will leave audiences reaching for an Advil). But the satirical novelty wears off quickly. With all of its internal rules and references, the film attempts to critic-proof itself, trying to get everyone to laugh with it instead of at it, and fails tragically. “First rule of remakes,” Sidney says, in one such meta moment. “Don’t f*** with the original.” Scream 4 should have taken its own advice.
Someone slap a “do not resuscitate” order on the Scream series, because this is one franchise that’d be better off left for dead: D.
