It all started with a panicked 911 call in a small, fictional California town called Woodsboro, and it ended in a blood bath. The closing words that Courtney Cox’s character, Gale Weathers delivers at the end of the original Scream movie are synonymous with the horror franchise and they bring the story full circle, in as close to a perfect ending as possible, in my opinion. I’m a very biased Scream fan, as it was one of the first movie franchises that really made that business of moviemaking appealing to me. I remember how big of a deal it was to be seeing a gory, R-rated movie as a middle-schooler, I remember almost all of the nutty one-liners that Stu and Billy Loomis recite in that final act, I remember what the original did for the horror genre during the late 90’s. The franchise has a lot of history to me, so it’s difficult to write an objective review of it, but nevertheless I can still try, can’t I?
I’m going to rundown the plot synopsis of this movie rather quickly, because there are so many other topics that I want to discuss. But, it’s the fifteenth anniversary of the original Woodsboro murders and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is returning to town for some publicity for her new book, Out of Darkness. Sidney’s return though is coupled with a grisly murder of two Woodsboro High student. The killer eventually makes it known that Sidney and those who she loves are primary targets and the rest of the town become suspects, like in the previous three movies. But, Scream 4 is unlike the movies that came before it (Thankfully it’s much different than Scream 3). The biggest difference I noticed was how the screenplay addressed slasher-movie cliché’s. Like the infamous opening scene murder sequence, the police chief’s buffoonery in solving the murders, “the rules to surviving a sequel or trilogy”, and various other cliché’s. This time around Wes Craven, Kevin Williamson, and company dispelled all the major cliché’s by basically creating a joke of them. It’s evident from the somewhat confusing, somewhat controversial first scene, but I think it was an extremely wise play and it achieved one of the most important tasks for the movie, to keep your core audience guessing/interested/satisfied. I’m sure if they wanted to they could’ve wrote an opening scene with Sidney being “off-ed” and turn everybody on their heads, but that would’ve made the rest of the events of the film very difficult to come up with and also left little doubt in the audience’s minds on whether she’d survive the movie or not. They could’ve had a scene similar to Drew Barrymore’s from the original, but more over the top of course, this probably would’ve been met with displeasure because of the whole “been there, done that” notion. I think they got it just right this time around.
In terms of casting, I’m so glad that Emma Roberts got the role of Sidney’s cousin, over Ashley Greene. Roberts really “killed” the role, and I can see her being cast as a similar character in the future because of how well she pulled it off. Hayden Panetierre, as Kirby Reed, was another casting choice that I really enjoyed. Panetierre not only nailed the look, but had all the right moves to go along with it. Nico Tortorella, as (INSERT CHARACTER NAME) , was another savvy selection, as every time he appeared on screen it echoed the creepiness of Billy Loomis to me. Anthony Anderson and (GUY FROM THE OC) did provide a little comic relief, but their characters were both too one dimensional and lacked enough screen time to really have an impact on the movie. Lastly, Alison Brie’s character, Sidney’s publicist, was acted incredibly, with me finding myself hoping for her death because of how nasty/unlikeable she was in the film.
Honestly, some scenes in the film were too over the top, nothing really with blood and gore, but more in terms of just, “I saw this coming a mile away, and they’re still going to have it happen”. This is I think unavoidable when dealing with the fourth movie in a franchise, but I don’t feel that it happened to often where I was checking my watch to see when it would all be over (But, again I’m a long-time fan of the Scream franchise). But, with a young nucleus of actors coming on board for this movie there have been rumors of this being the first installment in a new trilogy, as long as this film performed at the box office. Unfortunately, the movie has had a very dismal showing at the box office and any hopes of a Scream 5, are as unlikely as Drew Barrymore surviving the opening scene of the original movie.
