SCREAM 4 (2011) (a review)This is the restart of the SCREAM franchise that re-teams the original writer (Kevin Williamson) and director (Wes Craven). It also brings back Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette and brings in a new group of teens -- Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettierre, Rory Caulkin. This is a movie that was plagued with problems -- apparently they brought in other people to rewrite Williamson and Craven was unhappy about a number of things. The original SCREAM was a big hit. This one wasn't.
The story: Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) comes back to Woodboro to promote a book only to have a new Ghostface killer killing off high school students.
Was it good?
No.
Look, there were a lot of problems but for me it came down to something simple. The first movie worked because it had a brilliant idea -- it has a young girl unsure if she should have sex with her boyfriend and then externalized it in the context of a horror movie to being a story about a young girl not sure if her boyfriend is a killer. Yes, the movie had some scares and a lot of humor and the whole deconstruction thing, but the reason it worked, why we rooted for her and became involved with that simple parallel. It's the Buffy method -- understand the emotion your character is going through and find a cool way to externalize it.
This movie had none of it. Sydney really isn't dealing with anything -- in fact none of the characters seemed to be dealing with anything -- and the eventual reveal was kind of boring. The original is all about trusting the boyfriend so when they reveal that he is the killer...well, that was pretty cool. Here, when it is finally revealed it just comes out of nowhere and feels lame. In fact, it would have been better to reveal the killer from the beginning. That at least would have added some tension that was lacking since every scene with them we would know they were the killer planning the next crime right in front of the people trying to stop them.
But this was just lame.
*** AVOID ***
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