Scream 4 (2011)

10 years after the events of the last movie Sidney, Dewey, and Gale have to go thru it all again.  This time Sidney returns to Woodsboro to promote her new book about being a survivor and starting over.  Coinciding with her visit another batch of kids, including Sidney’s niece, start being hunted by the Ghostface killer.  Dewey, who is now sheriff, is on the job.  With the help of Gale they start unraveling another conspiracy and of course Sidney gets pulled right into the middle of it.  When the dust clears there is another body count and another group of survivors. 

The Scream franchise was a classic case of diminishing returns.  The 1st was a really good movie, the 2nd repeated too many things from the 1st, and the 3rd just seemed too forced.  Though in all 3 movies they had the advantage of a strong cast.  So I wasn’t too excited to check out Scream 4, which took them 10 years to make.  But it really surprised me.

This is such a great story.  It opens up with a couple of gotcha bits where you are watching a movie in a movie, that itself is a movie.  Yeah I know it sounds confusing, but it works.  Plus in a nifty way Scream 4 uses this to make fun of it’s own franchise.  That is pretty clever.  They also do a great job of bringing in the rules discussion, only this time it is about reboots and remakes.  This could have been really dumb and annoying, but it wasn’t.  The plot also makes reference to the original flick, while updating it for a world where social media and technology has changed everything.  Hell even when the killer(s) is reveled they refer to the original.  I really dug this and again the writing in Scream 4 is superior.  The returning characters of Dewey, Gale, and Sidney are all treated well and I have to say that seeing this cast back on the screen as those characters was nice.  I think that bringing back the writer of the original, Kevin Williamson, helps.  If anyone would be motivated to “protect” these characters it would be him.   

So I’ve talked about the writing and characters.  Much of that discussion was nostalgic for the series.  Don’t take that as an indication that Scream 4 doesn’t work as a horror movie.  It really does have the goods.  There are some good jump scares and the kills are staged well.  You never know when Ghostface is going to jump out at the cast and when he does it will make you hop out of your seat.  When he does get to them the kills will stick with you.  We get a lot of knife work including a neat bit with a knife to the forehead!  So in a vacuum without thinking about the rest of the series at all Scream 4 is still worth checking out. 

Okay if you haven’t figured it out yet I’m going to recommend Scream 4.  In some ways I think that it might be even better then the original.  If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet then you should. 

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2011 John Shatzer