Reviewed by Geno McGahee
In 1996, the original SCREAM was released and it sent horror in a new direction. The whodunit featuring “ghost face,” a masked man with a knife was a hit. There were two horrible follow ups, SCREAM 2 in 1997 and SCREAM 3 in 2000, and now, eleven years later, we have SCREAM 4.
SCREAM 4 begins with the movie “STAB,” a movie within a movie, covering the events involving Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), and the death of her friends at the hands of ghost face. The whole “STAB” movie thing that this movie has going on is rather lame, but since it existed in the other two SCREAM flicks (2 and 3), they had to address it here.
We then have the first kills of the film and the return of ghost face and I have to say that it was nice to see him back. The murders are prompted by the return of Sidney to Woodsboro, as she promotes her book about her ordeal. I haven’t seen Campbell in a while. She has aged gracefully, but didn’t give anyone a PG-13 relationship like she did in the first. At her age, it’s probably inappropriate.
No aging so well is the plastic-looking Courtney Cox, resuming the role of Gale Weathers, now married to Dewey Riley (David Arquette), the sheriff of the town. Cox definitely had some terrible plastic surgery where she sort of resembles Michael Jackson, overly doing the Botox and facelifts. It’s Hollywood and a lot of aging superstars do it, but Cox should have shopped around before settling on her surgeon.
With Gale at home, Dewey has a deputy that has her eyes on him, and she is smoking hot and cooks for him! Goodbye plastic woman! Her name is Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton) and she has it for Dewey. To his credit, he keeps it in his pants and won’t even eat her lemon squares. That’s how things start. You begin with lemon squares and then brownies and then boom boom.
This film is jam packed with annoying characters. We have the two film guys that are definitely an attempt to fill a void…a perceived void left by Jamie Kennedy’s character “Randy.” They fill the void, but did we want it filled? Although very hot, Judy Hicks is rather unrealistic and annoying, but maybe if Dewey gave her some, she’d relax. Then Sidney has an assistant that is another unrealistic character that is unlikable and annoying. There really isn’t a lot of character development here at all…
Gale is on the track of the killer, Sidney is fighting against it again, and there are a bunch of suspects. I have heard that the surprise ending to this film was clever and I eagerly awaited it, only to be thoroughly disappointed. I’m guessing that this movie was written with no idea of how it was going to end and then the writer thought: “I’ll make them the killers!!!” The reasoning was sort of silly and it just wasn’t much of a surprise because the characters are so underdeveloped. The script was really really weak and it seems that the movie is depending on the older timers like Dewey, Gale and Sidney to carry it and the rest of characters are just there to be there.
SCREAM 4 is much better than SCREAM 2 and 3, but it fails to measure up to the first and if it stands alone, it is forgettable and mediocre at best. It becomes obvious that this movie didn’t “have to be made,” it was a “let’s make it for a buck” sort of flick. SCREAM fans will enjoy it because it’s nice to see ghost face and the other familiar faces again, but 10 years from now, people will only be talking about the original. I do recommend it.
Scared Stiff Rating: 5/10. OK but not a Scream
