Scream 4
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere
Director: Wes Craven
Rating: 4/5
Hollywood likes sequels and remakes, it’s just a fact. But out of all of Hollywood it’s the gore-hounds and chill-seekers that love a good (or more usually terrible) re-run of a classic.
So it should come as no surprise that possibly the man who can claim to worse at this than anyone else, Wes Craven, should revive the horror series of the 90’s. After more than a decade out, Scream is back.
Once again, we are thrown into the life of Sidney Prescott (Campbell) who is trying to put her past behind her and is visiting her home town of Woodsboro to promote her latest book.
Unfortunately for her, someone doesn’t want her forgetting and on the anniversary of the original murders picks up the mask and starts killing local teens.
Targeting Sidney, the tattered remains of her family, mainly in the form of niece Jill (Roberts) and her bunch of high school friends alongside the old duo of Gail Weathers and sheriff Dewey (Cox and Arquette) the killer is running wild and it’s yet again time for them to battle for their lives against a crazed clocked knifeman.
This is a film packed with self reference and knowing winks at the audience, but whereas the original embraced horror of the time, Scream 4 is more than just a little scathing about the wave of ‘torture-porn’ that’s swept our screens. It still loves the 80s.
This is a Scream film, about Scream and the films based off the events of Scream in the film’s world. Keeping up? Good, because that’s what makes Scream 4 so much fun to anyone with more than a passing interest in the tales of Ghostface.
That doesn’t stop it being a really good horror film in its own right though. This is both scary and funny throughout, with a breathtaking pace and no bother about being straight up vicious when it wants to be.
All of this would be worthless though without, as the film itself states, you caring about the characters. This is Scream 4’s best trait. In Sidney Prescott, Craven and his writers have a truly classic character on their hands.
Strong, tough and still extremely sympathetic, it’s a lesson for all other writers out there. The returning Neve Campbell also slips back into Prescott’s shoes with aplomb as do Cox and Arquette.
But while the old gang are still great, it’s the fresh blood that gets a lot of the screen time and thankfully don’t ruin it.
Yes the new crowd may fall into stereotypes now and again, but these are by far the most likeable and rounded stereotypes for ages. With good performances in particular by the rapidly rising starlet Roberts and Panettiere as her sassy best friend, they are more than just the usual serial killer fodder.
Scream 4 is a welcome return to form from one of American horror’s best exponents over the last 30 years .
While it may be little too insular to match up to the illustrious original, Scream 4 is by quite some way the best thing Wes Craven has done for at least 14 years.
It’s the best slasher flick of the last few years and may even be one of the best American horrors of the decade.
It also proves once and for all that a guy with a knife is still much better than a puppet with traps, the devil or whatever has been blamed for the last few years for cinemas homicidal tendencies.
Scream 4 is out now.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith
Tagged in Scream