Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
4/24/11
While
his subsequent output hasn't always delivered the goods, Kevin Williamson
remains one of the most famous screenwriters of his generation because
he once had what every writer dreams of: The Idea. That Idea
was Scream, the 1996 Wes Craven thriller that, for the first time,
placed characters who'd actually SEEN horror movies into a horror movie
plot and let them try (usually unsuccessfully) to put what they'd learned
to use in saving their own lives. But Scream was more than
just a clever concept and some witty dialog (although it had its share
of both): it was a crackerjack murder mystery with a terrific resolution
and a not-unintelligent meditation on what draws teens to horror movies
to start with. And Craven not only made it one of his best movies,
but assembled a wonderful cast that turned the writer's first-rate characters
into icons. For its underrated 1997 sequel, Williamson went even
further with the Big Ideas, creating a killer who was Sequels Incarnate
and used him/them to comment not only on the money grab nature of most
follow-ups, but also on the similar impulse that drives us to cash in on
our own real-life tragedies. Scream 3, made without Williamson's
direct involvement while he was off directing his poorly-received passion
project Teaching Mrs. Tingle, simply was what Scream 2 derided
and ended the franchise with an unjustified whimper. But now, over
a decade later, all parties have reassembled to reignite their fire with
Scream
4. And Williamson, who's spent almost all of his post-Tingle
career presiding over mediocre and/or short-lived TV series, still knows
how to work his Great Idea for all it's worth. In Scream 4,
it's the Reboot and the societal values it reflects that are his target,
and while you have to get almost all the way to the end to really see the
grand design, this is a genuinely worthy addition to one of my favorite
horror franchises. All surviving original cast members return in
good form with some strong new additions.
On
the eve of the 10th anniversary of the famed “Woodsboro Massacre”, two
girls watch Stab 7 and comment on how increasingly pointless and
self-referential the sequels have become before being murdered themselves
by a killer or killers in the Ghostface disguise originally donned by the
Woodsboro killers and popularized by the Stab franchise. This
coincides with the return to Woodsboro by Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell),
around whom the three rounds of original Ghostface killings revolved.
She's promoting a book she's written about her triumph over a decade of
victimization, but no sooner has she begun her book signing than the phone
that made the final calls to the new victims' home is traced to the trunk
of her rental car. Her old friend Dewey Riley (David Arquette) is
now Sheriff, married to "Woodsboro Murders" author Gale Weathers-Riley
(Courtney Cox), who's chafing against their small town life together.
As a suspect, Sidney can't leave town, so she stays with her aunt Kate
Roberts (Mary McDonnell) and her niece Jill (Emma Roberts). More
calls from Ghostface and more victims follow. Joining the roster
of suspects are Jill's friends Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) and Olivia (Marielle
Jaffe), Rules-spouting film geeks Robbie (Erik Knudsen) and Charlie (Rory
Culkin), and Dewey's Deputies Judy (Marley Shelton), Perkins (Anthony Anderson)
and Hoss (Adam Brody). The new Ghostface is recording the murders
to stream them online, and if Sidney's going to survive this reboot of
her troubled past, she's got to learn a new generation's set of Rules.
While
Dimension executives no doubt dream of Scream 4 as a new beginning
for their cash cow franchise, it's really more of a generational tag a
la Rocky Balboa. But what's interesting
about that is the way it suggests these characters and their ever-evolving
antagonist could be brought back every decade of so to comment on the changing
times like a fictionalized horror version of Michael Apted's -Up
movies. It's interesting to note that none of the Big Three survivors
of the original trilogy are actually horror fans, and from the beginning,
the key horror hook of Williamson's franchise is that concern that it's
really not “only a movie” and the darkness a love of horror reflects in
fans could somehow reach out and strike them in the real world. But
by Scream 4, it's become something else as well. Williamson,
his stars and the fans of the original are no longer “kids”: pop
culture has moved on and a new generation is being fed a new kind of horror
movie by the studio system, and that very fear of generational change is
as big a part of this movie as the fear of a masked killer stabbing you
to death.
Accordingly,
Campbell, Arquette and Cox are all a tad weary in their roles. While
the later two are simply catching up with their characters after the normal
psychological impact of age, Campbell is doing something pretty interesting
with Sidney. As advertised, she really is past the victimized trauma
that defined who she was in the first two sequels and even when a new Ghostface(s)
singles her out, she doesn't backslide. Instead, she's learned to
play this game to win, and while there's nothing she can do to stop those
around her from falling prey to their own idiotic impulses, Sidney Prescot
is no longer a woman who's going to get caught investigating a sound or
wasting her single chance to knock over a killer who's charging up the
stairs after her. Surviving has become who she is, and Campbell does
a really solid job of seeming like a totally different Sidney Prescott,
rather than simply Neve Campbell unable to get back into character.
Roger Jackson once again makes the Ghostface Voice just the right combination
of ruthless murderer and pathetic loser.
Befitting
the killer's intention to reboot the franchise, the new characters mostly
match types from the original Scream. Roberts does a great
job of filling Campbell's shoes, and Panettiere, like Rose Magowan
back in the day, is wonderfully sassy and sympathetic at the same time.
Knudsen and Culkin don't quite live up to Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard,
and because the Skeet Ulrich role is so clearly set up to be the Red Herring
this time around, Nico Tortorella doesn't spend much time doing anything
but looking guilty. Looking to both top his iconic Drew Barrymore
opening gambit and comment on the rabbit hole of self-referentialism so
many pretenders to his throne have gone down, the opening Mobius Strip
of movies and reality gives snappy roles to a number of actresses, but
the bit with Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin stands out as a disturbingly
bizarre short film all its own.
Craven,
who was as guilty as anyone of overdosing on Scream 3's confusion
of satire and parody, regains control and stages some really solid sequences
of stalking and slashing. He also contributed, along with S3
writer Ehren Kruger, to rewrites after Williamson was forced to leave a
reportedly chaotic shoot to go back to work on his Vampire Diaries
TV series. All told, the first ¾ of the movie isn't as zippy
or compelling as the first two movies in the franchise, but then we find
out who's under that Ghostface cowl...
*****SPOILER
ALERT! DO NOT READ ON UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN SCREAM 4! I'M SERIOUS!*****
...and we see what's really going on not just in a very clever plot twist
but also in Scream 4 as a film: like his killers, Williamson
has created his own Scream reboot, casting new actors in the old
roles and following the blueprint of the original fairly closely until
a cynical twist ending makes the two surviving kids from the original the
killers in the remake. But he's also brought back the survivors from
the original franchise, and once we learn about Jill's plot to make herself
famous by recreating Sidney's claim to fame and taking her place in it,
it's literally the original Scream vs. its own remake in a fight
to the death. What, after all, is a modern reboot but an attempt
to murder a classic movie and take its place? Of course, because
this is a movie for fans of the original, any pretenders to its throne
“f**k with the original” at their peril.
But,
of course, it's more than just that: the killers in the original
Scream
trilogy, whatever their twisted cinematic obsessions may have been, were
motivated by a desire for real revenge for real slights. Jill and
Charlie are motivated by a pure nihilistic desire to do whatever it takes
to be famous. In their empty world, they have no friends, no goals,
only competition for those precious clicks that would allow them to get
ahead of an entire planet trying to blog, podcast, reality show or adultor
their way into the public eye. Not because they want to act, write,
excel at a sport or create art, but because they see other people being
famous and know that must be where it's at. In a society that's removed
all moral clamps from the pursuit of untold fortunes on Wall Street, getting
Yours is really the only goal, and the stars of the
Scream reboot
have simply crunched the numbers and decided it's a hell of a lot easier
to just kill everyone they know than make a fortune in derivatives.
And
Williamson sees the same impulses in the reboot phenomenon itself:
an attempt to warm our hands on the fading embers of what we know was good
before, to relive the experience of seeing our favorite movies for the
first time. Why earn the experience of seeing a great new movie?
It might suck. But we know the classics were great, so new versions
will have to be even better. Right? So it's not being or even
seeming good that matters, it's having been heard of.
Roberts
gets a really sensational soliloquy on these subjects where I could really
see her father Eric's unrivaled skill at B-movie villainy in her.
And once the fight is on in the closing scenes, she's amazingly good at
providing physical menace given that she's half the size of any of the
movie's other stars. Yes, some will call her physical prowess a plot
hole, but this IS a horror movie, and one of those Rules we have to accept
is that anyone who decides to go on a killing spree is going to be physically
up to the challenge.*****END OF SPOILERS*****
For
all these reasons, Scream 4 both is and is not a deliberate recreation
of its predecessors. As he did originally, Williamson has thought
of a new and exciting hook for the horror remake and with the help of his
old collaborator Craven (who's directed half of the features Williamson
has written), has delivered something that's just as much fun to think
about once it's over as it is to watch. While I doubt we'll see these
start cranking out brand new Screams every year or two in the foreseeable
future, I do hope to see them Scream again in another decade or so, when
Neve Campbell, Kevin Williamson and myself will be another ten years older
and even more concerned about Those Kids Today. |
