Scream 4

SCREAM 4                               B                     

USA  (111 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Wes Craven 

In keeping with the theme of the original, SCREAM 4 parodies all horror films, but in particular the initial SCREAM (1996), following the same format, opening with a telephone call, the familiar voice of the demented teen stalker, and before you know it, a handful of teenagers sitting around watching horror movies are dead before the opening credits, where one in particular, an especially brief appearance by Anna Paquin, is drop dead hilarious.  Part of the humor throughout the film is listening to teenagers wise crack about how much they know about horror films, how they would never be so easily fooled.  What Craven does especially well is create set ups for potential victims, where the audience can foresee murders before they happen, causing Craven to bypass convention and move in another direction, attempting to keep the audience off balance while always delivering the goods, where the teen deaths are usually as amusing as they are bloody.   Ace tabloid reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) is now married to Deputy Dewey (real life husband David Arquette), who has now become the town’s Sheriff.  But the sleepy California town of Woodsboro has been quiet since the murder rampage exactly one decade ago.  Weathers’career is dead, having documented the grisly murders, but has since hit a dry spell, striking out in her attempt to write fiction.  Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott is back in town promoting her own book, where upon her return, what greets her but light posts that have appropriately been decorated by Ghost Face masks, apparently a prank from ghoulish teenagers.    

With the familiar core cast reunited, Dewey is called away from the flirtatious advances of the new Deputy Judy Hicks (Marley Shelton) to investigate the new murders.  The ten year anniversary of the only event the town is known for is being celebrated with a new bloodbath.  More havoc ensues, especially the introduction of a new cast of teen characters who are just as clueless about their future, yet brag continuously with that know-it-all bravado that will surely lead to some untimely deaths.  Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) is part of the rat pack of girls, and is taken under the police protection provided for Sidney, which doesn’t stop one of their pack, the pretty girl next door with the large breasts, from getting toyed with and attacked right in front of their helpless eyes.  Despite this gruesome sight, Jill finds continued solitary confinement a form of police harassment, as it is unthinkable for teenagers to spend any time alone away from other teenagers.  It’s simply written that way.  It’s all part of the teen formula where they stick together.  Weathers learns a few new tricks from the high school cinema geeks, one of whom (Justin Michael Brandt as film geek) runs a live webcam on the headset he wears, which documents on the Internet whatever their feeble lives experience, which obviously isn’t much, but this explains how the new stalker would have to update their murders with the latest technology, where the murders would have to be caught live in order to register a pulse with the high school population. 

Of course, following the format of the original SCREAM, this all leads to another giant drinking and party sequence where the murderer is on the loose, another synchronized orgy of blood and death that defines the genre.  For the occasion, the cinema geeks are running their annual Stab-a-thon film fest, movies based on the Gale Weathers books, all in commemoration of the original murders.  Craven, again relishing the movie within a movie concept, has plenty of fun re-enacting some of the original scenes, using Heather Graham in Drew Barrymore’s opening sequence, where an attempted murder takes place in real life while the same thing is happening onscreen.  A town without pity that has been afflicted with murder and mayhem, spawning more twisted and demented teens who are the offspring of the original murder spree, shows a callous disregard for anything real, where life is just a continuing joke, and kids remain fuckups from generation to generation.  This gripping finale matches the original while offering some social insight into the overpowering need to be needed by today’s teens, afflicted with shortsightedness and their ferocious desire to display their lives on the Internet for all the world to see, thinking this somehow makes their world rock.  Not quite as wild or original as the first, which introduced this smart-assed stalker formula to the world, both written by Kevin Williamson, this is nonetheless a well-made and thoroughly enjoyable horror film that ratchets up the tension with equal amounts of wry, satiric commentary.  While it remains a bloodbath, this offers blood and gore with a different kind of relish and overt glee rarely exhibited in horror flicks.  The common denominator, however, is that teens continue to be clueless about the world around them, easy pickings for the town stalker. 

Scream

SCREAM                         B                      

USA  (111 mi)  1996  ‘Scope  d:  Wes Craven 

A different kind of horror film, one that slyly explains the rules of the genre as it goes along, that from the outset humorously pays homage to teen slasher films like FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) and the director’s own A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) where teens in supposedly safe suburbia are stalked by an unseen masked monster.  This film, cleverly written by Kevin Williamson, has a tongue-in-cheek attitude about its witty dialogue where characters are spewing bits and pieces of camp movie dialogue while it’s being restaged in some form onscreen.  Using the telephone as an instrument of menace, the surprises come fast and furious with Drew Barrymore (as a blond) in the opening sequence, where she is terrorized by the strange sounding voice on the phone, where the mood shifts from casual silliness to an overt catastrophe in split seconds, where the audience in their seats probably can’t stop from yelling instructions to her on the screen, but she disregards all common sense and is instead paralyzed in a shiver of fright.  Paying homage to Hitchcock’s shocking treatment to Janet Leigh’s blond heroine in PSYCHO (1960), Barrymore makes an even quicker screen exit while in the background can be heard the faint strains of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” a Blue Oyster Cult song prominently featured in John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978), perhaps the most perfect example of the teen horror genre, where Jamie Lee Curtis memorably claws her way to survival in that film, showing an uncommon amount of resilience and heady, split second thinking.  In the hearts of many, she won a lifetime achievement award with that single performance, becoming a central theme of this film as well. 

Neve Campbell is next, where she innocently mis-identifies the voice on the phone as that of a friend of hers, Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who works in a video store and his brain is obsessed with uttering movie references, where again the initial playfulness turns on a dime to something distinctly malevolent, where she fortunately survives a similar attack, an incident that leaves her traumatized, as her mother was killed in a similar incident nearly a year ago, where her testimony against the man she saw leaving the scene of the crime put him behind bars.  Nonetheless, her boyfriend, Skeet Ulrich, a Johnny Depp clone, mysteriously crawls through her window shortly after the attack to make sexual overtures.  At school the next day, who should be Campbell’s best friend, but the sexually promiscuous Rose McGowan, where similar to HALLOWEEN, the smart, virginal girl’s best friend is a sexual dynamo, one repressed and hung up on sex, the other free wheeling and wild.  This friendship seems to represent the full range of sexual expression as seen by a typical teenage male.  Quickly arriving on the scene is the unethical TV court reporter Courteney Cox, giving a Nicole Kidman TO DIE FOR (1995) performance, pushing other people aside to get what she wants, always abrasive yet catty, smug and wickedly bitchy, a woman who quickly receives a sock in the mouth from Campbell for writing a tabloid sleaze book alleging her mother’s murderer is innocent.  Adding to the tabloid sensation is the presence of Deputy Dewey (David Arquette), where the onscreen sizzle with Cox is a prelude to their real-life eventual marriage.  At this point, one has to acknowledge these young women onscreen are ravishingly beautiful, all in the prime of their careers, which may have contributed to the movie grossing over $100 million dollars at the box office. 

When the laid back California action moves to an unsupervised teen drinking party in a giant mansion, where McGowan hopes Campbell can forget all her problems, the real absurdity of the premise takes over.  It’s here that Randy offers the rules of the game as HALLOWEEN can be seen in the background playing on TV, claiming if you want to survive in a horror movie:  1.)  You can never have sex (or you’ll be killed)  2.)  You can never drink or do drugs (or you’ll be killed)  3.)  Never under any circumstances say “I’ll be right back,” (because you won’t).  Of course, all the rules are violated, which leads to outlandish circumstances where the stalker reeks mayhem, leading to a near surreal catastrophic finale, a bloodbath of killings and near misses which plays out in choreographed precision, like a funhouse of death using music, close ups, slow motion speed mixed with comic absurdity.  Cox secretly places a video camera inside the party, but there’s a 30 second time gap between reality and what’s viewed onscreen, which allows plenty of confusion, as characters continue to get tripped up by unfortunate bad timing.  Still, despite the graphic gore, the mystifyingly refreshing dialogue continues to amaze, beautifully capturing the Generation X mentality, continuing with nonstop references to past slasher films, where there’s a goofiness to it all, even as lives are at stake.  But the clever tone wins out, openly making fun of itself, as the entire film plays out like a movie within a movie, where the horror genre itself becomes an identifiable character associated with the unseen stalker, adding personality and color to this darkly entertaining film.  The one-liners are so quick and so perfectly embedded into the action that you may need to view this again, where you’ll get your chance, spawning not one, not two, but three Craven sequels so far.  Drew Barrymore sarcastically streams the director’s thoughts on the phone while offering her insight about the numerous sequels to Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, the film where the guy has knives for fingers, which the caller acknowledges was a scary movie.  “Well, the first one was, but the rest sucked.”