“The Scariest Scream is always the last” – Scream 3 Tagline
So the movie that defined nineties horror returns to the big screen today a mere eleven years after Neve Campbell released her ‘last’ scream in 2000 in what we expected to be the final instalment of the horror franchise but knew deep down it wasn’t to be the case…
Scream 4 – How can I say this delicately…? Is simply a way of reviving an old horse a shitty storyline (Note: I haven’t seen this movie just yet so can’t say if this statement is true) legs and dollar signs. Not that I’m complaining. Any excuse to see Courtney Cox try to scream with that amount of Botox injected into someone’s face is worth the movie ticket all by itself.
Scream was a rarity: a horror movie spoof that succeeded at creating a few scares as well as laughs. That’s because director Wes Craven the genius behind Nightmare on Elm Street, in addition to having a genuine affection for the genre, understood how wildly improbable and easy to lampoon it is. And, with Scream, he skewers it at every corner, using self-referential humour and a flood of in-jokes (some subtle, some obvious).
The fact is that in today’s culture a horror movie has to have an A-list female lead with huge breasts, who will spend the majority of the film running around screaming, and running up the stairs instead of out of the front door which Sidney Prescott herself deemed to be insulting in the first instalment, to be successful. It’s bloody typical and a tad predictable. What Scream was amazing at doing was getting a major star and killing them off in the first act. Bloody amazing, and effective and something that in the 90′s was much unexpected.
What Scream 4 has in store, I do not know. But I am hoping that it reaches my expectations. At this point, I’m not even sure what they are. Scream was a big part of my childhood; it was amazing and still is. I just hope that on behalf of me and all of the other people my age who enjoyed it that the new reboot to the franchise lives up to what we expect.
Make sure to check in tomorrow at some point for my review on the unmissable movie of the year…
