“One generation’s tragedy is another’s joke,” observes Deputy Dewey
Riley (David Arquette) during an early moment in “Scream 4,” on a day in
which ghost-faced costumes are lined on lampposts throughout town to
acknowledge the anniversary of a deadly teenage massacre from so many
years prior. Those old enough to remember the experience find it no
laughing matter, but as is the curse of time in history and society, our
culture is desensitized to the past because mankind exists in a
perpetual state of testing its boundaries.
The kids in the original “Scream” watched scary movies, recognized the formulas and walked around with a certain self-awareness of their bleak situations; here, over a decade later, horror films are not about patterns as much as they are about the gratuity, and Hollywood has lost all inspiration to green-light anything other than remakes. Therefore, the only movie rule that applies to the teenagers of Woodsboro circa 2011: all other rules are undergoing a revamp.
The kids in the original “Scream” watched scary movies, recognized the formulas and walked around with a certain self-awareness of their bleak situations; here, over a decade later, horror films are not about patterns as much as they are about the gratuity, and Hollywood has lost all inspiration to green-light anything other than remakes. Therefore, the only movie rule that applies to the teenagers of Woodsboro circa 2011: all other rules are undergoing a revamp.
The characters of “Scream 4” have
the same audacious self-awareness of those in the earlier pictures, but
with modern conveniences. Social networking sites allow news of death
and mayhem to spread quicker than the police will allow. Portable
cameras capture an endless supply of graphic footage from a murderer’s
point of view that can be instantly streamed worldwide. And, naturally,
the evolution of phone technology means that if the creepy ghost-face
killers don’t want to call up a victim and threaten them, they could
always just send a text instead.
The key to the movie’s
relevance is an evolved version of what has been key to the franchise as
a whole, which is to allow mayhem and hysteria to ensue without
allowing it to upstage the characters or their pointed observations.
This is not just refreshing, but also rather pleasantly surprising;
writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven – perhaps best when they
are collaborating with each other in the first place – have gone
against an age-old standard of long-running movie franchises running out
of steam by crafting a solid, driven and well-packaged endeavor that
also acts as a middle finger to the state of its parent genre. Long ago
did the people in horror films with above average intelligence cease
showing up; “Scream 4” plays like a trip to their compound.
Further
incentive to see the movie stems from the return of the series’
important players. This time, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), the core
survivor of three waves of deadly murders, is back in Woodsboro
promoting a self-help book she has just released, a move that coincides
with the anniversary of the first set of killings she witnessed.
Simultaneously, a new double murder has just taken place in town, this
time on two teenage girls who, like previous victims, were harassed and
abused verbally by a creepy stalker voice on a phone before being
mutilated from multiple stab wounds. This event triggers not just
traditional panic in the faces of the town’s citizens, but also a
feeling of déjà vu. The teenagers almost seem detached from their
situation, as if they’re merely outside looking in on another chapter in
a tired slasher franchise. But can you blame them? Hollywood has made
six sequels to “Stab,” the movie based on the Woodsboro Murders, and
numerous remakes to older (and better) films have so desensitized them
to reality that they barely seem present even during their own
slashings. This is not accidental on Craven or Williamson’s part,
either. Teenagers who watch horror movies in the now are genuinely like
this.
For the three lone survivors of the first trilogy,
the new wave of killings inspires, perhaps more than anything else, a
silent impulse to step back into a position that has become more
comfortable to them than it should be. Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), by
leading example, has had difficulty functioning in the years since her
run-ins with masked maniacs; sitting quietly behind a desk with a blank
document for days on end, she finds herself devoid of creative or
professional inspiration unless there is some kind of homicide going on
around her. Indirectly it also impacts her husband Dewey, now the
Sheriff of Woodsboro; relatively commonplace as a law figure, his
endeavors are a distinct contrast to how he behaves in situations
involving spilled blood. You’d think poor Sidney would be of the
opposite ideal since she is one of the fundamental links to this entire
massacre, but no such luck. There is a moment when Ms. Prescott
willingly runs into the house of a murder victim while the killing is
taking place, an action that is indicative of the inner strength she has
found in herself after so much time dealing with the grief and loss of
her loved ones. Us ordinary people would have probably fled for dear
life at the mere mention of homicide after witnessing – and surviving –
three extensive rounds of it, but hey, we’re obviously not the type
meant to be in a Kevin Williamson screenplay, right?
The
movie will probably be a shock to newer audiences, who won’t be nearly
as sure of accuracy when doing the guesswork on who dies and who the
killer really is. Williamson’s strength is not necessarily in
originality, of course, but in the clever dialogue that is used to
strategically throw viewers off the scent. This presents a good
challenge to newbies, while us seasoned veterans will have less
difficulty because the formula is now familiar to us (I don’t have shame
in admitting that there were times I even found myself predicting
potential one-liners before they were actually delivered). The film does
still come with a few unforeseen tricks up its sleeve in either case,
and I was particularly thrilled with the fact that the climax did not
play out as I had expected it might. Movies that utilize false
resolutions to throw its viewers off of a trail often do so at the
expense of logic or plausibility, but “Scream 4” executes the effect to
great results. By the end, I was genuinely surprised, bewildered and yet
satisfied by how the events unfolded.
Who lives and who
dies are not plot points I care to reveal, for the central point in
“Scream 4,” I believe, is that it no longer matters as long as the
people involved use their brains to enhance the journey. It’s funny, in a
way, to think about what a town hall meeting in this community might
have been like in the in-between years, or what might be said at public
gatherings by residents who were around to bear witness to both waves of
murder. If they are anything like the psychotic children they raise,
their observations would no doubt make for stimulating dinner
conversation. It must, after all, be so thought-provoking for a town
like Woodsboro to find notoriety in the fact that smart teenagers who
watched countless horror movies were capable of so much macabre over a
few short years.
Horror (US); 2011; Rated R for strong bloody violence, language and some teen drinking; Running Time: 111 Minutes
Cast:
Neve Campbell: Sidney Prescott
David Arquette: Deputy Dewey Riley
Courtney Cox: Gale Weathers Riley
Emma Roberts: Jill Roberts
Hayden Panettiere: Kirby Reed
Alison Brie: Rebecca Walters
Produced by Wes Craven, Carly Feingold, Iya Labunka, Marianne Maddalena, Ron Schmidt, Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein; Directed by Wes Craven; Written by Kevin Williamson;
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