Scream 4 (2011)

The kindest thing I can say about Scream 4 is that it isn’t terrible. That is hardly a recommendation, but given the circumstances, it could have been a lot worse.  There a few touches here and there that help make it watchable – Marley Shelton’s awkward deputy; Hayden Panetierre’s likable turn as the horror fanatic, Kirby; a few humorous moments involving Gale Weathers and two members of the high school AV Club; and the unmasking of the killer, which is genuinely surprising.  The problem is that we have seen it all before and even the reveal at the end isn’t enough to overcome the familiarity. Though, one could argue that the familiarity is the entire point of Scream 4 – the killer is essentially doing a “remake” by recording the murders and posting them online. 

What’s even more irritating is that original characters in the first film seem to have regressed since the third movie – Dewey and Gale once again are at odds with one another.  How did Dewey get promoted to Sheriff? In Scream 3, at least Dewey was slightly competent – he is the one that notices the photographs of Maureen Prescott, Sidney’s deceased mother, were taken on the same studio back lot where STAB 3 is being filmed.  He also manages to save Gale from certain death by firing his revolver at the killer. Unfortunately, in Scream 4, he just stumbles around the scenery and makes a complete ass of himself. Even more embarrassing is the fact that, in the movie’s climax, he is incapacitated with a bed pan. Dewey and Gale’s story line ended in Scream 3, there was really no reason to have them in the movie, other than the fact that they are “fan favorites.”   Gale’s redemption in the original Scream was an inspired idea; a lesser movie would have predictably killed off the character.  The problem is that, in each sequel, she has the same damn character arc – she goes from a bitchy tabloid journalist to being a more compassionate heroine.  Granted, Scream 4 does a clever variation on the character – she is so desperate to get back into journalism that she is willing to team up with two nerdy high school students, Charlie and Robbie, who have their own podcast.  This leads a few amusing scenes between Gale and the two students, but for all principle purposes, it’s the same story we have seen in the previous movies.  Just like in the first movie, Gale plants hidden cameras at a party hoping that something big will happen.

The character of Sidney is far less interesting to watch, despite being a “ stronger” character she still makes questionable decisions that endanger her and the lives of the others.  As flawed as Scream 3 was it, at least, gave Sidney a strong character arc; she begins the film as a complete recluse that is highly paranoid of the outside world (she has a fence around her property and arms her house with a security system).  Her only contact with the outside world is through the telephone – she counsels abused women on a hotline. She occasionally visits her dad and talks to Dewey, but otherwise she lives a lonely existence. Eventually, after learning about the murders of set the set of STAB 3, Sidney chooses to come out of hiding and face her fears. More importantly, she is opening herself up to other people. Scream 3 may be the weakest out of the original trilogy, but Sidney does make for a compelling heroine.  In Scream 4, Sidney has become a best selling author of a self help book and her hometown, Woodsboro, is the final stop on her book signing tour.  She finds, much to her horror, that her much younger cousin, Jill, and friends are being terrorized by a killer donning the “Ghostface” mask.  Given Sidney’s past experiences with serial killers, you would think she would be a more formidable opponent for the killer, but she is fairly useless for the most part. Sidney is not that engaging of a protagonist and this is largely due to her passivity this time around; it doesn't help that she is often pushed to the sidelines to make room for her younger and “more attractive” co-stars.

Scream 4 opens with not one, not two, but three pre-credits scenes. In the first scene two girls are watching a horror movie in a house and receive a threatening phone call. They, naturally, bite the big one, but it is all revealed to be a movie being watch by two blondes sitting on a couch. One of blondes, Rachel, complains about how stupid the movie is, only to be stabbed by other blonde, Chloe, who tells her she talks too much. However, this is also revealed to be a movie (a movie within a movie within a movie) being watched by two teenage girls, Jenny and Marnie, hanging out in the living room.  Jenny plays a prank on Marnie by calling her cell phone and impersonating “The Voice.”  Needless to say, both girls are promptly disposed of and then the SCREAM 4 title card flashes across the scene. This is meant to be hip, but it completely undermines the horror of the scene – the deaths of Jenny and Marnie are too abrupt to have any real impact.  In the first movie, the death of Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) was so unnerving because it slowly built to that moment. It was a rare instance in which stunt casting great benefited the movie–Drew Barrymore, the biggest star in the cast, is killed off in the first ten minutes, thus letting the audience know in the advance that NO ONE is safe. The opening to Scream 4 makes me yawn with indifference. WHO ARE THESE GIRLS?  I admit I’m out of tune with the times, therefore I have no clue if the two actresses cast in this scene (Aimee Teegarden, Britt Robertson) are big named television actresses, or if this was a movie they happened to get cast in. Were their deaths supposed to be shocking? It lacks the freshness of the first movie and the shock value of the second film – the first two victims are murdered (in a movie theater) during a screening of the movie STAB. Hell, even the much maligned Scream 3 had an interesting variation on this formula – the opening scene is a (failed) chase to the rescue; Cotton Weary, while stuck in traffic, receives a phone call from the killer and races to his apartment to save his girlfriend.  Naturally, it turns out disastrous for both of them. The whole “movie within a movie” idea was amusing in Scream 2, especially with Tori Spelling playing the “movie” Sidney, but it is pretty tiresome this time around.

Scream 4 reflects Wes Craven’s, and Kevin Williamson’s, contempt for the endless horror remakes that have plagued the cinemas over the last decade; three of them being  updates of Craven films (The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, and The Nightmare on Elm Street). Hence, it is no coincidence that practically all the young, NEW characters come to horrible ends, while the original cast members (Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette) survive the ordeal with a few injuries.  Sidney sums up everything perfectly when she tells the killer, “You forgot the first rule of remakes, __. DON’T FUCK WITH THE ORIGINAL!”  It is also not too surprising that the teenagers in Scream 4 are meant to be pale imitations of the characters in the original – Jill (Sidney), Kirby (Tatum), Charlie (Randy), Trevor (Billy), and Deputy Judy Hicks (Dewey).  Though, I would argue that Kirby is superior to Tatum, however, I’m probably in the minority on this one.  It also a tad bit ironic seeing Craven being critical of remakes considering he was a producer on a few of them; the aforementioned The Hills Have Eyes and The Last House on the Left, as well as a dreadful remake of the 1962 classic, Carnival of Souls. 

This is one of the few instances where a downbeat ending might have worked better; it would have been genuinely shocking if Sidney had been killed off at the end, thus forcing one of the younger cast members to take up the torch. Sure, it would be a cheap shock, but it would also be quite unexpected. 

 Initially, this is what Kevin Williamson seems to be setting up in his script -the character of Kirby is pretty savvy when it comes to horror movies and is, probably, the most sympathetic character in the entire movie, but this turns out to be a ruse. Plus, making Kirby the heroine would contradict the whole “anti-remake” theme that pervades the movie.  

Also, like other slasher movies, Scream 4 is loaded with pretty useless characters, the most obvious being Rebecca, Sidney’s publicist, played by Allison Brie. Rebecca is excited by the murders in Woodsboro and hopes to exploit them for her, and Sidney’s, benefit. Sidney is appalled by her attitude and fires Rebecca. We know that her time is brief and she is killed in a particularly brutal fashion – stabbed multiple times and thrown from the roof of a parking garage.  There are also the extremely inept police officers, Perkins and Hoss, who are assigned to guard Sidney and her relatives. They have a horrible habit letting their guard down – people are murdered on their watch and they allow the killer to sneak up on them.  How many bumbling police officers can one movie have? There’s Dewey, Deputy Hicks, and these two idiots. It would be far more interesting if the police were actually presented in a more competent manner, yet still at loss when it came to the murders (see John Saxon in Black Christmas). As a result, there are a lot of pointless, and redundant, scenes of police officers puttering about, while teenagers are getting butchered at an alarming rate. Who knows? Maybe Wes Craven is paying homage to his first movie The Last House on the Left – which features similar scenes of lawmen acting like idiots.

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It’s hard to do a review of Scream 4 without revealing the killer’s identity, so if you still haven’t seen it (and desperately want to), then I suggest you skip this section of the review, because I will RUIN it  for you.  If you have seen Scream 4, or have no desire to see, or simply don’t care, then READ ON. 

Finally, after all the bodies have piled up, it is revealed that the killers are Jill and Charlie. The reveal of Charlie itself isn’t too surprising, but the unmasking of Jill was a jaw dropping moment, at least for me.  Jill proves to be an extremely ruthless villain and even murders Charlie once she no longer has any use for him.  Why commit all these murders? MEDIA ATTENTION!  Growing up, Jill was jealous of all the attention that Sidney got in the family and decided that turning to murder would be an ideal way to direct the spotlight towards her.  After bumping off her friends at a party, and believing she killed Sidney, Jill inflicts injuries on herself and frames her ex-boyfriend Trevor by planting a gun on his corpse to make it seem that she is the sole surviving victim of the night’s atrocities. Ironically, at the movie’s end, Jill is given the media attention she always craved, but isn’t alive to enjoy it.  I like the reveal of Jill being “Ghostface”– it is hard to believe that such a sweet faced, innocent looking, girl could be a cold blooded killer. The critical flaw is that Emma Roberts doesn't have the acting chops to pull off the transformation; she plays the “psychopathic” Jill by acting all fidgety, shouting her lines, and emphasizing certain words (“Sidney THIS! And Sidney THAT!”). Also, she isn’t remotely intimidating in any of her later scenes, and it is completely baffling how the survivors have such a hard time taking Jill down – she is so tiny.

It is hard to swallow that the scrawny Charlie and petite Jill were capable of committing the murders that “Ghostface” does throughout the course of the movie – that’s the disadvantage of having a stuntman donning the “Ghostface” costume. I also have a hard time believing that Charlie would murder Kirby. She  is, essentially, Charlie’s dream girl and her finally showing interest in him would, at the very least, give him second thoughts about carrying on with the whole“let’s murder everyone” plan. It would be more interesting if Kirby became a source of friction between Charlie and Jill, 

 which, in turn,  allows for Sidney to take advantage of the situation. The whole finale in the hospital is so silly that it undermines the tension that Wes Craven was trying to create - Dewey gets hit in the head with a bed pan; Gale and Deputy Hicks stumble into the room in the nick of time; Sidney takes out Jill by shocking her head with a defibrillator; Jill some how survives the shock and comes at Sidney with a knife, then Sidney shoots her in the head with Deputy Hicks’ gun. It’s easily the weakest ending in the entire series – yes, it is even weaker than the ending to Scream 3.

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Scream 4 was a flop at the domestic box office; grossing 38 million on a 40 million budget. This was a huge come down from the previous entries in the series (the first two grossed over a 100 million, while Scream 3 made 89 million). Its poor performance at the box office almost guarantees no more Scream sequels; though, I guess a Scream TV series is in the works.  Maybe I am being too hard on Scream 4 – it’s not a great movie, but it is certainly better than the Slasher genre dictates.  It is overly familiar at times, but it moves a long at a fairly swift pace and is never boring.  I have no desire to own it on DVD/Blu-ray, but if it’s on television, or Netflix, it is worth a look – there are certainly worse ways to spend 111 min. If you go in with extremely low expectations, then you will be pleasantly surprised that it isn’t terrible. Again, that’s not exactly high praise, but that is about the best I can do.

Credits

Cast: Neve Campbell (Sidney), Emma Roberts (Jill Roberts), Hayden Panetierre (Kirby), Courtney Cox (Gale), David Arquette (Dewey), Rory Culkin (Charlie), Allison Brie (Rebecca), Nico Tortorella (Trevor), Erik Knudson(Robbie), Marley Shelton (Deputy Judy Hicks), Mariella Jaffe (Olivia), Anthony Anderson (Deputy Perkins), Adam Brody (Deputy Hoss), Mary McDonnell (Kate Roberts), Lucy Hale (Sherrie), Shenae Grimes – Beach (Trudie), Anna Paquin (Rachel), Kristen Bell (Chloe), Aimee Teegarden (Jenny), Britt Robertson (Marnie), Roger Jackson (The Voice).

Director: Wes Craven
Screenplay: Kevin Williamson
Running Time: 111 min.