Scream 4

It’s day 15 of 31 Days of Horror – and I finally sat down to watch Scream 4. I’m not gonna lie, I’d kind of been dreading it. For me, the Scream franchise is hit or miss.

The original Scream was a big hit. I remember feeling exhilarated and terrified in the theater. And even though it has one of the most ridiculous horror movies deaths ever, I still loved every second of it. I had no idea who the killer was, and I ❤ the crap outta that end reveal, plus of course, video geek Randy and all the clever horror movie references.

Scream 2 was mostly a miss. The opening scene, while it has its cheeseball moments, is pretty fantastic. What could be a more perfect way to murder someone than to attack them in a theater full of Stab fans, who are just going to think that another ghostface-costumed theater-goer repeatedly stabbing someone else is part of the show? Brilliant, right? And the Sarah Michelle Gellar scene? Love. 

Where it fails though, is by making the killer way too easy to figure out by having that person act insane in every scene, and by making them disappear for half the movie. I wonder who it is? Oh, right. THAT person. Whoops. By the time Craven hit the reveal, I was like “whatever”. Except for the theater opener, there just weren’t any surprises.

Scream 3 was a hit, but only because I laughed my ass off at every meta joke, cameo, and caricature they included. I liked that this one was poking fun at its own trilogy, even with the ridiculously over-the-top backstory about Sidney’s mom. What can I say? It’s entertaining, and there were a lot of great, splattery deaths.

Which brings us to Scream 4, which is sure, pretty unbelievable, but I still liked it way more than I thought I would. I kind of love that they had a hot female character be an uber-nerdy horror fan this time around (even though I hate Hayden whatsherface with a burning, fiery passion). And even though you could tell how many killers there were right off the bat, that didn’t ruin it for me. They did an excellent job throwing suspicion on pretty much everybody. I also enjoyed the “remake” concept, which was pretty interesting.

Things I didn’t like: the false beginning (x2) was kind of annoying, and it was slow, at times. But the gore was completely insane – it seemed way more bloody than the other Scream films – and I had fun watching, so I’m gonna say that Williamson & Craven did a nice job with it.

Recommended if you’re a completist like me and you need to see every sequel ever made (altho this got me into a lot of trouble in the 80s and 90s with The Howling and PuppetMaster sequels, among other things).

But seriously, it’s better than a lot of Craven films – I’m looking at you, Cursed – so you should see it.