Movie Review: Scream 4

Damn I miss the Fall/Academy Award season. Till then, I'm stuck choosing between Scream 4 and CGI kid flicks. I really hope this is the FINAL chapter of the (less than) epic Scream saga because I don't think I can take anymore of this.

Not that Scream 4 is a horrible movie. It's not. In fact, it's actually kind of entertaining and succeeds in pumping new life into a long since stale franchise (anyone remember Scream 3?! Yeah, I don't either). The problem is, there's only so much you can do with these type of films and by now the Scream series has done just about everything possible. To borrow from Denzel in Training Day, "Shit's checkers it ain't chess!" (well he actually said....nvm) Catch my drift?

So back to the film itself. It's the fifteen year anniversary of the original Scream killings and Sidney (Neve Campbell) is back in her home town for a book signing when, low and behold, a NEW set of brutal murders takes place as another ghostface killer (Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang!) sets to terrorize the town anew. I have to applaud Wes Craven for his excellent casting. All the new Woodsborrow High kids deliver stellar performances. Not as great as Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan and Jamie Kennedy from the original, but Rory Culkin, Hayden Panettiere, Marielle Jaffe and Emma Roberts all do their best to bring this fourth installment of the franchise back to life, while the regular cast (Campbell, Cox, Arquette) continue phoning it in for those fat paychecks of theirs.

Scream kids, across generations.

That witty, self aware/"Meta" dialogue gets old fast and there are several glaring plot holes that had me scratching my head during the third act, but seriously, who cares. It's Scream 4 folks, not The King's Speech. So while this movie is far from perfect, Scream 4 is easily the best installment since the original. In fact, from a plot/continuity standpoint, this film serves as a near direct sequel to the first Scream, so if anything we should all be thankful that we can just erase Scream 2 and 3 from our memories and act like they never happened. Also, Marielle Jaffe is smoking hot in this movie and, there's a Kristen Bell cameo as well! Ms. Bell is worth the price of admission alone. At least for me she was.



*NOTE*
I should mention that the original Scream was one of my favorite movies growing up. I watched that film countless times thanks to the wonders of illegal cable/payperview channels during the mid 90's. If it seems like I'm being extra harsh with the Scream sequels, it's just because I love Stu and the boys from the original oh so much.