Scream 4
Genre: Horror
Director: Wes Craven
Stars: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette
**
Scream was a necessary adrenaline shot in the heart for the horror genre, revitalizing the slasher movie by poking fun at its predictable conventions and clichés. The sequels offered diminishing returns, with a third entry so terrible that it killed off the series. Now a decade later, along comes Scream 4, reuniting the surviving cast members of the first series for a collection of new killings in the town of Woodsboro. A fantastic opening sequence sets the tone, but things fall apart from there.
The goal of this movie was to comment on the recent slew of horror franchise reboots and remakes that soiled screens over the past few years. Unfortunately, those movies have no conventions or clichés to pick apart, so aside from noting that “remakes suck,” the filmmakers don’t have much to do. Ironically, the movie ends up being dragged down by the conventions of its own franchise and what was once thrillingly original now feels repetitively dull. Director Wes Craven is still a master genre craftsman, so there are a handful of memorable scares and some clever commentary on contemporary celebrity culture, but overall Scream 4 is just another needless entry in a franchise long past its prime
