There's a kind of sequel that's emerged over the past few years that I've come to call the Moving Back Home film. These are the movie equivalent of moving back in with your parents; after failing to make a big splash in the movie business, an actor or filmmaker returns to the series that made him or her famous. The most prominent example is the Fast and the Furious series, which reunited Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez for a blockbuster continuation after Hollywood was less than kind to them otherwise.
Scream 4 brings back Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, fairly dormant in recent years. Though hardly a failure, Craven's money has manifested itself mainly in remakes of his classic films (The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street). His one outing as director in the past five years, My Soul to Take, was an underrated yet barely noticeable genre entry. Kevin Williamson has stuck mostly to TV, having birthed two successful series (Dawson's Creek and The Vampire Diaries). Both claimed they'd never do another Scream movie, and Williamson even declined to write the 3rd one. But here they are again.
The effect is less a grand re-invigoration of the series than a dull 15-year high school reunion. Though Williamson applies the same tongue-in-cheek approach that he did to the previous films, his work here is more mean-spirited and cynical. In the other Scream films we got the sense that he was lampooning them out of love, but here the screenplay is distant and mocking. Maybe Williamson just doesn't like horror movies these days.
He seems to take issue especially with the "torture porn" of the Saw films. The new addition to horror since the series finished, Williamson says, is that of the killer as hero. In this new leaf, the killer is likelier to take responsibility for the murders himself, and even videotape himself committing them. Not only is the killer the main character; the killer makes the movie and the rules.
Williamson and Craven aren't having that, even if their killer is. Even if it does have a few new twists, Scream 4 is a traditional guy-with-a-knife movie. The problem is that it's a bad guy-with-a-knife movie, and a lazy one to boot. The other three films took delight in hurling us through their suspenseful contraption, adhering to conventions while at the same time denying them. In Scream 4 there are few surprises and little fun to be had.
Even the returning cast members look like they would rather be anywhere else. Neve Campbell returns as Sidney Prescott, who's just come back to her hometown of Woodsboro as a bestselling author. Little does she know that the Ghostface killer has returned with her, and is offing high schoolers while taunting her all the while. Campbell looks about as thrilled to be in the movie as Sidney must be to be facing the killer again. Her attitude seems about right; the actress has never quite gotten the credit she deserves after delivering some brilliant work in movies like The Company and When Will I Be Loved.
Dewey Reilly (David Arquette) is now the local sheriff, and wife Gale (Courteney Cox) has given up her ambitious journalism career to be a housewife. Arquette, so wonderfully goofy in the previous films, is all business here with no personality. Cox is given little to do but kvetch about how bored she is living the smalltown life. As Sidney's teenaged cousin (and the movie's obvious setup for a final girl), Emma Roberts doesn't make much of an impression.
The movie does have its signs of life. The opening sequence, a staple of the series, plays a few clever point-of-view tricks and is the most fun that Craven and Williamson allow themselves to have with the premise. Without giving too much away, I'll say that it made me wish that the movie had continued in this fashion, as a sort of slasher version of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Hayden Panettiere, as the town's resident smart-aleck hipster high schooler, is always fun to watch, and finds a likable character amid the horror cliches. Erik Knudsen and Rory Culkin are also funny as two nerdy videophiles.
To an extent, we the audience will only have fun if a movie is having fun with itself. The Scream series has always been one to mock conventions and throw us for just the right loop. This time it's just going through the motions. Though Williamson still has his sights set on the usual targets, Scream 4 is as dull and mechanistic as any high-number Saw sequel.
* 1/2 out of ****
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