In an age where reboots and legacy sequels are a dime a dozen, cashing in on successful brands that have been sitting dormant for some time, the horror genre in particular has been hit hard by rushed, underfunded, and lacklustre reboots of iconic franchises. Following the success of the Scream trilogy in the late nineties, Miramax had always planned for a fourth instalment in the film series, but franchise creators Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven were reluctant to return, knowing the franchise would be unlikely to attract the same level of popularity without them, Miramax allowed the franchise to fade out of relevancy during the 00’s. It didn’t take all that long for Williamson and Craven to reunite once again with the desire to bring Scream into the twenty-first century, taking pot shots at the trend of reboots and the at the time massively popular ‘torture porn’ subgenre. Bucking the trend as usual, Scream 4 managed to become a legacy sequel worth caring about.
Beginning her book tour in her hometown of Woodsboro, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) believes she is long rid of the murders that followed her wherever she went. But on the fifteenth anniversary of the original Ghostface killings, Woodsboro once again becomes the scene of tragedy as new murders take place. Struggling to keep social panic under control, Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) teams up with Sidney, and his wife Gale (Courteney Cox-Arquette) to interview the local high-schoolers to learn the tropes of reboot horror movies and get one step ahead of the new Ghostface killer.
Beginning her book tour in her hometown of Woodsboro, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) believes she is long rid of the murders that followed her wherever she went. But on the fifteenth anniversary of the original Ghostface killings, Woodsboro once again becomes the scene of tragedy as new murders take place. Struggling to keep social panic under control, Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) teams up with Sidney, and his wife Gale (Courteney Cox-Arquette) to interview the local high-schoolers to learn the tropes of reboot horror movies and get one step ahead of the new Ghostface killer.
As usual, Scream 4 delivers the franchise trademark self-aware wit to its place within the horror genre. Where the first film directed its witticism at the slasher genre, the sequels have each aimed their sights on the respective sequel position they hold. Scream 2 poked fun of predictable slasher sequels, Scream 3 deconstructed trilogy tropes, and now Scream 4 seeks to revolutionise the reboot. It plays into clichés and tropes by the dozen to present an experience where you can see all the twists and turns telegraphed a mile away, but then flips them on their head at the last moment to present an interesting spin on things.
Now in their thirties, our leading trio of Sidney, Dewey, and Gale are out of their depth in this new decade ruled by technology and meta obsessed culture. So, naturally, they seek the help of the new cast of characters to help them out, all of whom intentionally fill the roles of the original films cast.
Jill (Emma Roberts) is Sidney’s cousin and the well telegraphed ‘final girl’ whom all of the murder seems to revolve around, Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) is the sexy friend whom all the boys pine for, Charlie (Rory Culkin) and Robbie (Eric Knudsen) are the nerdy guys who understand the killers’ methods, and Trevor (Nico Tortorella) is the suspiciously dangerous boyfriend of Jill. It all plays out exactly as you would expect, except when it doesn’t, and those twists are what make Scream 4 work so well. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, this is a slasher movie through and through, but it does subvert expectations on reboots as much as it can to present something that feels fresh.
My only real complaint about the story is that the ending just sort of happens. There’s three ‘third act climaxes’ to keep you guessing and by the time the third rolls around it does feel like the film is starting to drag its feet, only for it to abruptly end with no closure. Perhaps that’s the point of it all and I’m missing the joke. Allowing a few minutes at the end to address the aftermath would have been welcome, especially because Scream 4 feels like an encore to Scream 3 rather than a setup for more sequels.
I haven’t spoken about the visual design for the Scream films before in my reviews because they are very much rooted in the aesthetic of the era. They look like generic horror films from the time they were made which makes sense. Scream 4 adheres to this principle too, but this arguably works against it because the visual style of the late 00’s and early 10’s, particularly in the low budget horror these films are paying homage to, looks awful.
The colours are either over-saturated or washed out depending on whether the scene is dark or light. It’s done in an attempt to make the shadows look darker I think, but the result is that the overall image looks either really dim or blindingly bright. Night time sequences can be difficult to distinguish what’s happening because the colour has been graded in such a way to make the blacks look as dark as possible, and during the day anything bright is blinding and therefore makes all the other colours look dull. It makes the image look flat, and it’s something I’m very glad the industry moved away from (particularly with the advent of 4K HDR where this kind of grading was no longer necessary to achieve dark blacks and bright whites), but Scream 4 suffers from employing it.
Scream 4 feels like a long overdue return to form after the underwhelming Scream 3. It may have taken a twelve-year hiatus for the franchise to become relevant again, but Williamson and Craven made it feel as though Scream never left thanks to it being full of new ideas and interesting takes on tired tropes.
This feels like a perfect coda to the Scream franchise, and whilst it would prove to be far from the end for the legendary horror franchise, it would be the end of Williamson and Craven’s collaboration due to Craven’s death just a few years later. But would a second lengthy hiatus prove to be a step too far for the franchise?
Now in their thirties, our leading trio of Sidney, Dewey, and Gale are out of their depth in this new decade ruled by technology and meta obsessed culture. So, naturally, they seek the help of the new cast of characters to help them out, all of whom intentionally fill the roles of the original films cast.
Jill (Emma Roberts) is Sidney’s cousin and the well telegraphed ‘final girl’ whom all of the murder seems to revolve around, Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) is the sexy friend whom all the boys pine for, Charlie (Rory Culkin) and Robbie (Eric Knudsen) are the nerdy guys who understand the killers’ methods, and Trevor (Nico Tortorella) is the suspiciously dangerous boyfriend of Jill. It all plays out exactly as you would expect, except when it doesn’t, and those twists are what make Scream 4 work so well. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, this is a slasher movie through and through, but it does subvert expectations on reboots as much as it can to present something that feels fresh.
My only real complaint about the story is that the ending just sort of happens. There’s three ‘third act climaxes’ to keep you guessing and by the time the third rolls around it does feel like the film is starting to drag its feet, only for it to abruptly end with no closure. Perhaps that’s the point of it all and I’m missing the joke. Allowing a few minutes at the end to address the aftermath would have been welcome, especially because Scream 4 feels like an encore to Scream 3 rather than a setup for more sequels.
I haven’t spoken about the visual design for the Scream films before in my reviews because they are very much rooted in the aesthetic of the era. They look like generic horror films from the time they were made which makes sense. Scream 4 adheres to this principle too, but this arguably works against it because the visual style of the late 00’s and early 10’s, particularly in the low budget horror these films are paying homage to, looks awful.
The colours are either over-saturated or washed out depending on whether the scene is dark or light. It’s done in an attempt to make the shadows look darker I think, but the result is that the overall image looks either really dim or blindingly bright. Night time sequences can be difficult to distinguish what’s happening because the colour has been graded in such a way to make the blacks look as dark as possible, and during the day anything bright is blinding and therefore makes all the other colours look dull. It makes the image look flat, and it’s something I’m very glad the industry moved away from (particularly with the advent of 4K HDR where this kind of grading was no longer necessary to achieve dark blacks and bright whites), but Scream 4 suffers from employing it.
Scream 4 feels like a long overdue return to form after the underwhelming Scream 3. It may have taken a twelve-year hiatus for the franchise to become relevant again, but Williamson and Craven made it feel as though Scream never left thanks to it being full of new ideas and interesting takes on tired tropes.
This feels like a perfect coda to the Scream franchise, and whilst it would prove to be far from the end for the legendary horror franchise, it would be the end of Williamson and Craven’s collaboration due to Craven’s death just a few years later. But would a second lengthy hiatus prove to be a step too far for the franchise?