Scream 3
Year: 1999
Director: Wes Craven
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell & Courteney Cox
Runtime: 117 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 02/03/23
Director: Wes Craven
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell & Courteney Cox
Runtime: 117 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 02/03/23
Following the huge success of the first two Scream films, and Kevin Williamson (writer for Scream 1&2) having provided treatments for two sequels with his submission of the original film, a third Scream was inevitable. Following the production difficulties with the second film, those involved had hoped that Scream 3 would be a much smoother production, but it seems that it was destined to be anything but. Scheduling conflicts meant that Wiliamson couldn’t return as writer, and so Ehren Kruger was signed on to take over and scrapped Williamson’s treatment in the process. With the rising popularity of the cast, they too became difficult to schedule and so shooting needed to take place over a much longer time frame and was considerably more fragmented than the previous productions. But the biggest nail in the coffin it seemed came with the news of the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999. With the murders blamed on violent media, specifically horror films and action-based videogames, Scream 3 underwent rewrites during production to tone down the violence and play up the camp to present a film that’s far more satirical than its predecessors. The result is widely considered to be the weakest Scream film in the franchise.
A number of years have passed since the last Ghostface murders, with Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) now a successful talk show host, Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) coming off the back of a career high as a newscaster, and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) a grief counsellor for vulnerable women. With the production of a third ‘Stab’ film underway, the Ghostface killings resurface when Cotton is found stabbed to death. With the help of Gale and Dewey (David Arquette), Sidney must look into her past and find the true reason behind the Ghostface killings.
A number of years have passed since the last Ghostface murders, with Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) now a successful talk show host, Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) coming off the back of a career high as a newscaster, and Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) a grief counsellor for vulnerable women. With the production of a third ‘Stab’ film underway, the Ghostface killings resurface when Cotton is found stabbed to death. With the help of Gale and Dewey (David Arquette), Sidney must look into her past and find the true reason behind the Ghostface killings.
Playing on the tropes of trilogies, specifically expansion of the world through the main character’s previously unexplored backstory, Scream 3 is pure cheese. Where the first two films took well known tropes and clichés of horror cinema and turned them on their head, Scream 3 plays right into the hand of said tropes but does so with a self-aware grin on its face. Rather than cleverly subverting the audience, it just presents a straightforward and horrendously cliché slasher flick and with every new twist and turn that’s uncovered looks into the camera and winks at you. Unfortunately, this self-awareness doesn’t save the film from a truly wooden and overworn script that has been does a hundred times before. What gave Scream 1&2 leverage to be able to overcome the cliché nature of the plot was that Williamson always did something new or different with the well-worn tropes, Kruger’s script doesn’t allow for that. It’s clearer now more than ever that director Wes Craven likely didn’t have much input in relation to the writing of the Scream films, as I doubt that having directed the previous two films, he would have allowed such a stale script to become final.
That being said, Scream 3’s script isn’t bad, it’s just entirely uninspired. The final act in particular feels like a treatment for a Scooby-Doo episode, where our heroes are chased around a spooky mansion with lots of hidden hallways whilst being chased by Ghostface. Stick in the Benny Hill theme and it would certainly look more like a slapstick comedy than a self-aware horror, and the reveal as to who dons the Ghostface costume this time around is eye rollingly dumb.
Despite having almost double the budget of Scream 2, Scream 3 also feels smaller. Being primarily set on the film set of a Hollywood production, Scream 3 looks cheap and unfinished in comparison to Scream 2’s college campus. The backlot of a movie studio is not a big place, and Scream 3 feels positively cramped as a result. The killings themselves also regress back to straightforward stabbings rather than the increasingly elaborate spectacles of Scream 2. This is likely a result of the decision to tone down the violence, but it does feel like a considerable step back from what has been done before.
Scream 3 is fine. If you’re in need of a brainless slasher flick then you could do worse, but what will likely hold you back from loving it as that is the films insistence on needing to be smarter than the average slasher…even though it isn’t. It can’t hold a candle to the original Scream films, and thankfully this wouldn’t be the end of the franchise as it did return after an eleven year hiatus for a fourth instalment (and again more recently for the fifth and sixth entries). But Scream 3 presents a sequel that truly misunderstood what made the first two films so great, and whilst it isn’t an outright bad film it is most certainly underwhelming.
That being said, Scream 3’s script isn’t bad, it’s just entirely uninspired. The final act in particular feels like a treatment for a Scooby-Doo episode, where our heroes are chased around a spooky mansion with lots of hidden hallways whilst being chased by Ghostface. Stick in the Benny Hill theme and it would certainly look more like a slapstick comedy than a self-aware horror, and the reveal as to who dons the Ghostface costume this time around is eye rollingly dumb.
Despite having almost double the budget of Scream 2, Scream 3 also feels smaller. Being primarily set on the film set of a Hollywood production, Scream 3 looks cheap and unfinished in comparison to Scream 2’s college campus. The backlot of a movie studio is not a big place, and Scream 3 feels positively cramped as a result. The killings themselves also regress back to straightforward stabbings rather than the increasingly elaborate spectacles of Scream 2. This is likely a result of the decision to tone down the violence, but it does feel like a considerable step back from what has been done before.
Scream 3 is fine. If you’re in need of a brainless slasher flick then you could do worse, but what will likely hold you back from loving it as that is the films insistence on needing to be smarter than the average slasher…even though it isn’t. It can’t hold a candle to the original Scream films, and thankfully this wouldn’t be the end of the franchise as it did return after an eleven year hiatus for a fourth instalment (and again more recently for the fifth and sixth entries). But Scream 3 presents a sequel that truly misunderstood what made the first two films so great, and whilst it isn’t an outright bad film it is most certainly underwhelming.