Rich Reviews: Scream 4

"What's your favorite scary movie?"

Well mine is probably Scream. (The original Halloween and Devil's Rejects are up there.) There is a lot I liked about the first installment, particularly the way it revitalized the horror genre. The characters in Scream were self aware, they watched movies and openly discussed them. The "what if you were in a horror movie" angle. As a bit of a film dork myself, I enjoyed all the tip-of-the-caps to previous movies, specifically legendary horror classics.

Say what you want about the original, but it was very smart. It is easy to make fun of it now, and trust me all of my friends do for liking it so much, however I think it still holds up today, 15 years after it came out. The story is solid, the characters are well developed, and most importantly for a horror movie, it's both scary and entertaining.

What about the sequels? Well at least all of the references to movies were still there. They even made a point to say in Scream 2 that sequels suck, and "by definition alone they are inferior films." I thought 2 had it's moments, some good ideas, I enjoyed it.

Scream 3 did not have the same writer (Kevin Williamson) as the first two, but it acted as the finale of a trilogy. Again, like the second film referencing other sequels, they devoted some time in 3 to describe trilogies, different rules, rare in the horror field, etc. Again, it had it's moments, but clearly the films go, A, B, C (if you're grading at home).

Alright enough about the first 3 films of the franchise, I just wanted to point out that I am a huge fan, it's my favorite franchise of horror films (beating out Halloween and Saw). So needless to say I was pumped when I heard they were making a 4th (with director Wes Craven, writer Kevin Williamson, and stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette).



I was busy opening weekend, if not I would have gone, seriously. Anyway, the girlfriend and I were 2 of I'd say 10-12 people in the audience for a Wednesday night showing at 7:30pm. That's not surprising as it made only 18.7 million in its opening weekend. Not what they were looking for. (Scream 2 made 33 million opening weekend, while Scream 3 drew 33.4.)



Scream 4 takes place 10 years after the end of Scream 3. Gail Weathers (Cox) is now Gail Riley and is married to Sheriff Dewey Riley (Arquette) in Woodsboro (the original town). Sidney Prescott (Campbell) comes back to town to promote a book she wrote, and next thing you know people start getting stabbed. They introduce a bunch of new characters, lots of high school kids, some new cops, and you got yourself a cast, where not only can anyone die, but anyone can be the killer.



It's a classic "who done it/ who is doing it." I tried figuring out who did it for probably a full hour, I won't spoil anything here.

But was it good? In a word, eh. I didn't hate it, that might be the big Scream fan in me talking. For a movie that was 10 years in the making, it was a let down. You got to think, if Kevin Williamson spent 10 years on this it was going to be really good. I wonder if he spent 10 hours on it.

The first movie was so different and so smart, this movie tries to hard and comes up short. There was to much of the, "well that was how it worked then, so now it is like this, so we need to expect that, and everything is different while being the same." What? And they should have spent more time developing a true story instead of just upping the kill count and trying to fool you on who the killer(s) is/are.

In the end, it's no where near the as good as the first one, and doesn't even rival the second. I'd have to watch it again before I say for sure it's worse than 3, but I feel like I could do a solid debate on either side of 3 & 4 for which is better. If you happen to be a big fan of the series, it's worth a watch, but go in with low expectations. If you don't like these movie, you didn't read this far anyway.

When To Watch It Scale


The WTWIS is broken down to the following 4 categories...

-Theater
-Netflix
-TV
-Don't Bother

Although I was a bit disappointed, I will go with "Netflix" for Scream 4. (The TV version, unless on HBO will be edited pretty bad I imagine.)

Alright, there you have it. Hope this helps. If you saw it feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought or e-mail me at sportsbrief@gmail.com

-Keefe