Film Review: Scream 4

"This isn't a comedy, it's a horror film," Ghostface intones to an imminent victim early on, providing the perfect gloss on Scream 4.  The new installment of the postmodern slasher series dials down the humor and cranks up the viciousness.  It is dark, bloody, and unabashedly mean-spirited--a welcome contrast to the goofiness of its trilogy-completing predecessor.

That's not to say that the trademark cleverness is absent here.  For instance, the opening sequence (easily the best since Drew Barrymore's phone quiz in the original), is wonderfully witty in its use of nested narrative.  Scream 4, though, doesn't let all the in-jokes outshine the attempt to terrify (perhaps with the exception of one character's dying reference to Bruce Willis).  The focus remains on a pair of stab-happy psychos--the fact that there are two killers is made clear from the outset--bent on orchestrating a gruesome massacre in Woodsboro.

It's been over a decade since Scream 3, both in reality and within the chronology of the series, and in many ways the new film plays like Scream: The Next Generation.  There's a whole new crop of Woodsboro high schoolers here in danger of grim reaping by Ghostface, and they do make for an interesting cast of characters.  Unfortunately, the trio of series mainstays--Sidney (Neve Campbell), Gale (Courtney Cox), and Dewey (David Arquette)--get displaced by this youth movement, their screen time cut down to a point where they almost seem irrelevant to the action.  The film does endeavor to make a thematic point of this very fact, but the diminished roles for these familiar characters cannot be counted as a strength.

The nature of their characters has changed as well.  Sidney has
matured into a more maternal figure; no longer the haunted daughter of Maureen Prescott, she now functions mainly as the heroic protector of her cousin Jill.  And the formerly-bumbling deputy Dewey has been promoted to sheriff, Woodsboro's leading authority figure.  The dimwitted charm he displayed in the previous films is certainly missed here. (And speaking off missing aspects of his character: what happened to Dewey's gimpiness?  Is his ability to move around here unimpeded the product of intense physical therapy--or selective memory on the part of the filmmakers?  Either way, Dewey appears to have made the most remarkable recovery since Kevin Spacey's Keyser Soze stretched his legs at the end of The Usual Suspects.)

Ultimately, what makes or breaks a Scream movie is its climax--its unmasking of Ghostface and plot-twisting revelation of the killer's motive.  Scream 4's extended closing sequence is a highly successful one, as shocking as the film's commercials promised it would be.  Sure, there's an element of the Suddenly Psycho Syndrome that bedeviled Screams 2 and 3, but the archvillain proves to be quite the nefarious nemesis.  This killer's rant also forms a stinging critique of the narcissism of the Facebook/Twitter generation.  My only quibble with the film's closing: there was the potential here to end on a truly sinister note (or at the very least, with a cliffhanger), but the movie opts instead for the formulaic resolution.

Scream 4 is far from flawless, but it is much better film than I had anticipated.  Devoted fans of the franchise will be anything but disappointed as they file out of theaters this weekend.