Scream 4 Review

Scream 4 Review


By Jose


Plot:

Sidney Prescott, now the author of a self-help book, returns home to Woodsboro on the last stop of her book tour. There she reconnects with Sheriff Dewey and Gale, who are now married, as well as her cousin Jill and her Aunt Kate. Unfortunately, Sidney's appearance also brings about the return of Ghostface, putting Sidney, Gale, and Dewey, along with Jill, her friends, and the whole town of Woodsboro in danger.

Main Cast:

Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, David Arquette, Adam Brody, Anthony Anderson, Alison Brie, Mary McDonnell, Rory Culkin, Marley Shelton, Erik Knudsen

Review:

Scream came out in 1996 and at that time changed the face of slasher horror films. It added a new name to the infamous killers of horror and created a “new age” franchise ready to take over the movie industry. Fast forward 15 years, yes 15 years, and Scream 4 is released promising a new decade a new set of rules. Well sorry to burst your bubble but all you did was deliver a modern remake of the original and just shoehorned the surviving original cast.

But please do not take that as a negative right off the bat. Wes Craven did a rather decent job in tying in new technology with the Ghostface killings and did a good job giving us a new crop of young actors and actresses to kill. And Craven gave us a new set of slasher film rules or threw all the old ones out and left just one rule: if you are gay you survive. Really? Didn’t the rules get thrown out in part 2? So all you are doing is telling us again that the rule book is thrown out and then throw a gay joke at us?

The kills were similar to the other films too but I may be nitpicking there considering a kill is a kill and we have seen many, many different forms of slasher film deaths and kills that something will be repeated. Yet in the beginning where the girl is crawling away and gets hit by the garage door I remembered seeing the original scene and then immediately remembering the fat girl from one of the Scary Movie films in the same death yet breaking the garage door. I laughed.

Like I said before I did like the new cast, especially Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin, and Erik Knudsen. Not sure why but they stuck out for me and I liked every time they were on the screen. Everyone else were either good looking victims or background faces. Then you have the originals in Neve Cambell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette reprising their original roles. David and Courtneney did nothing for me and only seemed to be in it for a pay check and then got a ton of screen time. Neve actually did something and added to her character and the movie.

Final Thoughts:

So Scream 4 did not fell like a new movie, considering it has been fifteen years since the original movie. It felt like a remake. I actually did not like the beginning kill that the Scream franchise has made so famous. This version made it seem cheap and dumbed down due to the movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie before the actual real kill happened. After seeing the first two I thought the third was a fake out too. So overall it was a good slasher movie and I did enjoy it. I just felt a bit robbed considering there was so much hype about this 4th movie bringing something new and starting a whole new trilogy.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5