[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlaZfOiGaCU]
Ten Word or Less Review: What you expect when there’s a 4 in the title.
Revisiting the Scream franchise after 11 years felt like a desperate move when it was announced. Scream 3, way the Hell back in 2000, was proof that this self-aware, psuedo parody, horror franchise had badly burnt itself out. Long lost brothers equal soap opera garbage. In the subsequent decade the series’ stars, Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette, have all watched their place in Hollywood hierarchy fade drastically. Campbell hasn’t been in a notable film or TV show since the last Scream film. Director Wes Craven was starting to look like forced retirement was the only thing coming soon. Cox and Arquette did this movie and then got divorced. Very bad omens floating everywhere. Not helping anything is the fact that the horror genre as a whole is once again in a state of repetitious limbo, mired in remakes and endless sequels to Saw and Final Destination. Some hoped that Scream 4 would be able to do what the original Scream did, I.E. provide clever commentary on the genre all the while being an effective, reinventing horror vehicle at the same time. That was wishful thinking because Scream 4 is a tired, worn out crap shoot.
Scream 4 doesn’t reinvent anything as much as dogmatically retread the footsteps of its predecessors, beat for beat, clinging to the now worn idea that selfawareness equals clever. It doesn’t. People run around getting butchered by Ghostface. We sit and try to figure out who’s wearing the mask but actually caring is out of the question. The reveal itself is about as shocking as a glass of warm milk. Never out and out horrible but never close to being good, it feels like one more perfunctory sequel for the franchise. Something that should have come out in 2002 and subsequently ended the series forever. Hopefully that’s the case now.
The Spartan Dog Film Review 