“How meta can you get?”
For a series that prides itself on its inside knowledge of film construction, Scream sure can’t finish a trilogy. Scream 3 is a mess almost from top to bottom. The new cast members aren’t particularly interesting, and it’s not as funny as it thinks it is, but the worst crime the film commits is this: it’s the kind of film that Scream was built to make fun of.
The film revolves around the production of Stab 3, which is just a way for director Wes Craven and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (who wrote The Ring, which is good, but also wrote a few Transformers movies, which is bad) to indulge their most ham-fisted comedic impulses. Make no mistake: Scream 3 is a very bloody comedy. Once Jay and Silent Bob show up in your film, you can’t call it a horror film with a straight face. This is also an excuse to introduce some life-imitating-art-imitating-life themes that Craven doesn’t seem overly interested in. Scream 3 wants to delve into the blurring lines between reality and fiction, but only flirts with a genuinely interesting question, one that its structure makes it particularly well-suited to address. More often than not, though, it just chases one ill-advised twist after another.
I think my major problem with Scream 3 is that Sidney Prescott isn’t the main character. Don’t get me wrong, she’s here, but Neve Campbell only agreed to 21 days of filming, and it shows. Scream 3 is really about Dewey and Gale, and the film is worse for it. David Arquette may be many things – ersatz Jim Breuer, collect-call spokesman – but an action star he is not, no matter how much he squints. (Watch Riding the Bullet if you want to see a truly dreadful example of Arquette’s tough-guy routine.) Courteney Cox is…you know, she’s fine, but her hair and wardrobe is quite frankly horrendous, and I’m aware of how catty that sounds. The two are good together, as they always are, but the characterization is a mess; Gale pesters and stalks Dewey for a solid hour, then when he finally offers to help her, she responds with “I work better alone.”
In all fairness, there are some performances here that are a lot of fun, Parker Posey chief among them. The reigning queen (at the time) of indie cinema, Posey is clearly enjoying the chance to poke fun at spoiled, childish blockbuster actresses (her sulkily jumping into the arms of her bodyguard is a nice gag). Posey seems to be one of the only cast members who knows exactly how silly Scream 3 is, and she plays her character Jennifer like the cartoon she is. As the actress playing Gale in Stab 3, she horns in on Gale’s investigation, even getting to the point of introducing herself as Gale. It makes me think that somewhere in Scream 3‘s DNA there’s a very funny Kiss Kiss Bang Bang-style movie starring Posey and Cox.
We all know that every Scream killer is involved with (or obsessed with) Sidney in some way, so the reveals are never too surprising, but in Scream 3 the reveal is profoundly stupid. The killer is Stab 3 director Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), her secret half-brother! It’s all very soap opera, as is most of Scream 3, especially the dopey dream sequences involving Sidney’s mother (because Sidney’s dreams have always been a huge part of this series, so why not make them a focal part of the third installment?).
Scream 3 was posited as the final chapter of the series, which nostalgia and greed rendered impossible (see below), but this is the rare case when it’s good that the franchise wasn’t left alone. That’s fine if a series wants to die with dignity (like…wow, nothing is coming to mind), but Scream 3 would have been an ignominious ending to a franchise that deserved better.
In comparison, Scream 4 seems downright revelatory. Craven is back, as is original screenwriter Kevin Williamson, and it seems as though they exercised whatever demons they needed to with Cursed. The two came prepared to make a good movie, and while uneven, Scream 4 is a far better end to the series than the previous installment. (I don’t know if it’s the end of the series. Scream 4 was the last film Craven directed before his death, and while I remember hearing something about a Scream 5, the film doesn’t have an IMDb page, so consider it to be up in the air. Realistically, though, it’s going to happen.)
Scream 4 is the rare ten-years-later sequel that actually feels like it has a reason for existing (did we really need a Wall Street for the Shia LaBeouf generation?). The killers in the previous films, to a degree, all acted out of a desire for fame, or, failing that, infamy. Released in 2011, Scream 4 came out in the middle of a me-first revolution, one that continues to this day, where people post their most personal, mundane, or better-kept-private thoughts and actions on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Periscope, Vine, Snapchat, and whatever the hell else is hot with the kidz by the time I hit “publish” on this. It actually made sense for a new Scream movie, and that helps Scream 4 feel like a lot more than a cash grab.
Of course, revisiting old characters after so many years have passed is a risky venture (11 years elapsed between Scream 4 and 3), so there’s always the risk that it’s going to play like bad fan fiction. Thankfully, Scream 4 does a much better job of fleshing out its main cast – Campbell, Cox, Arquette – than its predecessors did. Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere (looking amazing with short hair), Rory Culkin, Alison Brie, and Marley Shelton acquit themselves nicely, as do supporting players like Adam Brody and Anthony Anderson (side note: I think these two are supposed to be comic relief, but they’re not that funny, which is baffling, because you don’t cast Adam Brody and goofy-ass Anthony Anderson in serious roles).
Scream 4 really embraces its identity as a reboot, and makes a good case for itself as a franchise with modern appeal (including, if I’m not mistaken, the series’ first gay character, Robbie Mercer, who predilection for filming everything makes him the prototype for Noah, the only good character on the Scream TV show). When Gale offers to visit the high school cinema club, the two kids who run it are more interested in Sidney – after all, as Roberts’ Jill explains, in order to be famous, “You don’t have to achieve anything, you just have to have bad shit happen to you.” Brie’s hilariously awful publicist Rebecca tells Sidney to embrace the fact that she’ll be a victim “forever,” not letting herself think of Sidney as a survivor instead, because, hey, it’s 2011 and victimhood is hot. Scream 4 is a lot more focused than Scream 3 in its examination of youthful myopic fixation on fame at any cost. It’s not especially trenchant, but it’s got a lot on its mind, and that’s not a bad thing.
I don’t know if there will be a Scream 5, but I’m pretty sure it’s inevitable. Which is too bad, really, because Scream and Scream 4 bookend the series nicely, achieving a sense of completion and return that works even if it wasn’t intended. Horror has never been a particularly subtle genre, and this isn’t a subtle series. But it’s the closest we’re going to get to a master’s thesis dissecting the genre and what makes it tick. The fact that Craven could lovingly poke fun at his own genre for four films while still making most of those films pretty good – well, that’s something of a triumph.
10/1: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
10/2: The Exorcist
10/3: Pontypool
10/4: Hocus Pocus
10/5: The Orphanage
10/6: Rosemary’s Baby
10/7: Alien
10/8: Scream series
10/9: Scream series
10/10: Cujo
10/11: The Cabin in the Woods
10/12: Pulse
10/13: The Babadook
10/14: Friday the 13th
10/15: The Last House on the Left (both versions)
10/16: The Thing (both versions)
10/17: Little Shop of Horrors
10/18: Hush
10/19: Silent Hill
10/20: The Shining
10/21: Funny Games (2007)
10/22: Evil Dead series
10/23: Evil Dead series
10/24: The Mist
10/25: The Ninth Gate
10/26: The Fly
10/27: A Nightmare on Elm Street
10/28: The Nightmare Before Christmas
10/29: 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later
10/30: It
10/31: Halloween (either version)
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