“How meta can you get,” asks series mainstay Gail Weathers (Courteney Cox) in Scream 4. Well, if you’re a horror franchise series reboot about a horror franchise series reboot, the answer is pretty darn meta. But isn’t that what we loved about the original Scream when it was released in 1996? The way it simultaneously used, called attention to, and subverted all those teen slasher-film tropes and rules (never say “I’ll be right back,” for example) that we all recognized from a decade of films that came before.
By “we”, I of course mean my generation, now in our early 30s and actually old enough to talk like scripter Kevin Williamson seems to think we talked at 17. To paraphrase a character from Scream 4, he and Joss Whedon “were my 90s.” But in the intervening 10 years since the last Scream movie was released, a whole new generation of teens has embraced a whole new batch of horror, a fact that wasn’t lost on Williamson and 71-year-old director Wes Craven. The two take every opportunity to point out then-and-now genre and cultural differences throughout the film, replete with new texting and social networking technology.
Not to worry, amid all this “meta” discussion of plots is an actual plot. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), perennial target of the knife-wielding ghost face killer, has returned to her hometown of Woodsboro for the first time in a decade. She’s there on the opening stop of a tour, orchestrated by opportunistic young publicist Rebecca (Mad Men’s Alison Brie), to promote her self-help book about giving up victimhood for good. Too bad that’s a little premature. It seems that the day before her arrival, also the anniversary of the original Woodsboro murders, a pair of teenagers were hacked to death at home in a manner that bears a striking resemblance to things past.
A few months ago, I wrote a review of Wes Craven’s simply terrible My Soul to Take, in which my only praise was for the filmmaker’s particular skill at opening scenes. In that regard, Scream 4 does not disappoint. The movie’s first few minutes is chock full of the kind of meta-horror-movie banter that made the original two films in the series (you’ll excuse me if I bailed on the third) a pop culture phenomena. Let’s just say it involves a film within a film within a film, a take on one of the original Scream’s most iconic death scenes, a joke about Robert Rodriguez, and racks up a famous-face death toll that would impress Drew Barrymore.
As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that all of the new killer’s targets and methods seem to be remakes—or, dare I say, reboots—of the original round of 1996 murders. And so assembles a cast of young teen fodder that looks like the original bright young things: Jill (Emma Roberts) is the brunette good-girl with the creepy-stalkerish boyfriend (Nico Tortorella) around whom all the carnage seems to center. She’s also Sidney’s cousin. Kirby (Hayden Panetierre) is Jill’s movie-savvy, smart-mouthed bestie with a penchant for pissing off now-sheriff Dewey (David Arquette). Meanwhile, Robbie (Erik Knudsen) and Charlie (Rory Culkin) are the pair of geeks who head up the high school’s cinema club and know all the new rules for surviving a millennial slasher pic.
The most sacred of these is “Don’t fuck with the original,” which Scream 4 thankfully obeys. For all its talk of torture-porn (the past decade of horror is notable for its seven Saw flicks), this movie sticks to its tradition of blending comedy and thrills and keeps the blood and gore at a pre-Jigsaw level. There are no shaky handheld camera shots, although the murders are documented via live webcam footage, and no 3D gimmickry. Still, because this movie doesn’t offer much in the way of innovation, how much you enjoy this formula will depend largely on how much you enjoyed the first three outings of the franchise.
Even for fans like me, Scream 4 does have its unwieldy elements. For one, this movie’s ending(s) are far less satisfying than the original. The motivation behind the new crop of killings—the thoroughly modern motive of fame whoring—is not so shocking, really. In addition, the cast is huge, which offers an ample supply for both body count and potential suspects, but also makes it hard to get invested in anyone outside of the familiar older faces. Panetierre stands out amid the newbies, delivering self-referential lines about having superpowers with genuine bitchy charm. Mary McDonnell, who plays Sidney’s aunt and Jill’s mom, is also fun in her slurring, bitterly campy role that I wish had been larger.
But the real trouble is that, as much as we enjoyed making fun of Freddy Krueger’s decline or being incredulous of Jamie Lee Curtis’s virgin status, the territory mined by Williamson and Craven in the original film was much richer than the one they’re working with here. Saw aside, this decade of horror films has been marked by rehashing. At one point, Panetierre’s character rattles off a list of the horror remakes that she’s grown up with (an impressively delivered monologue). If Scream 4 has nothing new to say, it’s because a whole generation of horror directors haven’t either.