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Scream 4

Posted by Buddy Acker on May 13, 2011 at 9:21 PM

Scream 4

Welcome back, Sidney Prescott

 

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Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Alison Brie, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Marley Shelton, Justin Michael Brandt, Rory Culkin, Anthony Anderson, Adam Brody, Kristen Bell, Anna Paquin


Rating: R (Strong Bloody Violence, Language, and Some Teen Drinking)


I generally hate any slasher movie with their horrible special effects and their dumbass characters (here’s looking at you, Friday the 13th) which is why I have enjoyed the Scream series so much: it turns slasher movies on their asses. The witty dialogue written by Kevin Williamson is something else: it manages to be both obvious and unexpected at the same time. A knife piercing someone’s flesh has never been so clever. Scream 4 follows in that great tradition. I don’t necessarily want to see a Scream 5 (or 5cream or whatever) but it wouldn’t bother me too badly either. Scream 4 is the first Scream sequel in over 11 years (Scream 3 was released on February 4, 2000) and Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson knew that making a fourth movie was a risk, and it unfortunately has not paid off critically. Scream 4 has a Metascore of 52 on Metacritic.com and 56% of critics liked it on RottenTomatoes.com. The user scores are somewhat better (a 7.0 on Metacritic and 64% on RottenTomatoes). I guess that I’m squarely in the user column because I liked it.


The real draw of the movie for me was the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott. It’s great to see Neve back in that role she’s so familiar with. She doesn’t disappoint the fourth time around. She underreacts and hams it up and I loved it. It’s also very nice to see David Arquette and Courteney Cox back after their questionable movie choices (they were in the completely humorless See Spot Run, the awful Zoom, and they both were in the ridiculous 3000 Miles to Graceland) since the other Scream films. Arquette has never been all that great of an actor but he is a likeable one and I just don’t understand at all how Cox is not a bigger star because I have always loved her. Why am I going over the acting? The Scream movies don’t have a thing to do with great performances. Let’s move on.


I knew who at least one of the killers was before the movie even started (I guessed the other before they were revealed). I have seen the first three films so it was pretty easy. The twist of who the killer(s) were from the first three movies was a surprise (and, in the case of Scream 3, also stupid). This time around, the surprise came from the sudden change that one of the characters goes through after being revealed as one of the people behind the Ghostface mask. What commences after that revelation is one of the best scenes in the movie.


I did not care for the scene that came right after that one or the rest of the movie for that matter because the ending felt strange and out of place. I noticed some bad things in the rest of the movie as well. There are several recycled elements from the previous Scream films despite the movie’s tagline of “New decade, new rules”. Scream 3 was in a new decade from the previous two movies as well and one of its taglines was “The scariest scream is always the last”. Whoops. That wasn’t true and neither is this “new rules” thing. This Scream plays by the same rules as the others did and doesn’t make an attempt not to. I’m glad it didn’t in a way.


Call me crazy, but the original Scream is one of my favorite movies. I have seen it several times over the course of my lifetime and I never grow tired of it. I saw Scream 2 again just the other day and still enjoyed it but I could go without watching it again for a while. I want to see Scream 3 again, even though I barely liked it (which is mainly the reason why I haven’t watched it in a while). If I reviewed these movies on here, my scores would be as such: Scream – 5 out of 5; Scream 2 – 4 ½ out of 5; Scream 3 – 3 out of 5. Scream 4’s score is below. I liked it much better than the third but not nearly as much as the first two. None of them are as great as the original, nor do I think that if Wes Craven decides to do another that it will be either. As pertains to that statement, I will close with a quote from Scream 4, spoken by Sidney Prescott:


“Don’t fuck with the original.”


Score: :D:D:D:D

 


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