Grade: A-
After 11 years, the Scream series has slashed its way back onto the silver screen with Scream 4.
It's no secret that when movie franchises reach their fourth installments, the filmmaking quality tends to be significantly worse. By this point in a series, the plotline has either become too convoluted to follow or has disappeared entirely, new characters pop up in an attempt to keep things feeling fresh but are rarely ever developed, and, worst of all, by number four, all originality has been bled out.
Somehow, iconic horror filmmaker Wes Craven (My Soul to Take) manages to avoid each one of these tragedies and deliver a sequel/reboot that not only lives up to its blood-soaked predecessors, but surpasses them in many ways.
The movie opens with a memorable scene that mixes equal parts comedy and horror to keep the audience laughing and jumping from the seats. It's moments like these that makes watching Scream 4 so devilishly entertaining.
The story once again revolves around the resilient Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell, Agent Crush), who has recently returned home to Woodsboro, for a stop on her national book tour. Her joyous homecoming is cut short, however, when a new killer begins recreating the kills of the original film and targets Sidney's high school cousin, Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts, Homework).
This causes the film to take on a balancing act of sorts. The movie attempts to tell the tale of Sidney and her longtime accomplices Gale Weathers-Riley (Courtney Cox, Bedtime Stories) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette, The Land of the Astronauts) while also following Jill and her group of high school friends.
The intertwining of the two storylines ends up causing Scream 4 to stumble a bit in the middle, but it manages to save itself with an impressive ending that melds the two in a near-perfect fashion.
This is thanks to the impressive script penned by Kevin Williamson (Cursed). The jokes are hilarious, the dialogue is full of wit, and the killer's identity is so well hidden that viewers won't know who it is until the climatic unmasking.
Just like the previous installments of the franchise, Scream 4 delves into the clichés and "rules" of the very category it finds itself in. Whereas the original focused on horror films, Scream 2 on sequels and Scream 3 on trilogies, Scream 4 takes on the latest trend of reboots, remakes and ludicrously high-numbered sequels.
This is where the film truly succeeds. Its criticisms of current Hollywood hits, like the Saw series, never fails to generate agreeing laughter. Whether or not the atrocious reboot of Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street had any effect on his inspiration for the film is anyone's guess, but the loathing of such remakes that seeps through the characters' dialogue seems to indicate so.
Still, as funny as the movie is, Scream 4 is still a horror film at its core, and a pretty damn good one at that.
The film doesn't shy away from blood and gore, but it also doesn't rely exclusively on it like several recent horror flicks. Instead, it uses just the right amount to craft visuals that are shocking without being overly grotesque.
This has been the biggest problem with the genre over the past few years. Directors have been turning to the overexposure of gore instead of focusing on creating true-to-heart scares. Scream 4, thankfully, breaks away from this.
While the film is able to capture some genuine edge-of-your-seat moments, there are a few cheap jump scares scattered throughout. They don't ruin the film, but when compared with the rest, they seem a bit lazy.
Scream 4 is hands down the best since the original. It's a return-to-form film that others in the industry should sit up and make note of. This is the horror film that's been missing from theaters for over a decade.
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