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| I don't know if I have the strength... |
Cast: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Hayden Panettiere, Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin, Alison Brie.
Director: Wes Craven
And at last we come to it. The end(?) of the franchise. I mean, other than the TV series. I've seen this movie a few times, the last time wasn't so long ago, and I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I had some appreciation for the "remake/reboot" spoof that it seemed to want to be...on the other hand, it wasn't a great film and it seemed to undermine that same very spoof concept due to having some sort of identity issue on where they were going and what they wanted to be doing. "Scream 2" ended up being better than remembered, "Scream 3" worse. I wonder how this will go? I'm not feeling terribly optimistic. I'm tired, burned and bruised...but I will forge on and see what, if anything, "Scream 4" will offer me. Hey, at least there are young actresses I like. Emma Roberts and Alison Brie...so I have that to look forward to?
Oh, right, I forgot about this opener. I hated it then, kinda hate it now. I get it, I do. Haha, meta-fiction is SOOOOOOOOO over and we're doing meta-fiction, haha, get it? Stab 5 had time travel. Blah blah. It's not cute. It's not funny. It's shrill and annoying and has Anna Paquin for some reason. So it's kinda like "True Blood." Like "True Blood" this just keeps going. On and on it goes. I get it. It's eating itself. Can we stop now? Finally, we're done and we can get on with the film. I feel like I aged ten years.
Okay, I like Duey...aww, geez, it's Dewey? I wrote three blog posts with it as Duey. Shit. Anyway, I like Dewey waking up to the Beverly Hills Cop theme.
Okay, so we have Kirby. I don't understand the phenomenon that is this character with the fans. I mean, okay, she likes stuff we like. The character has nothing of worth going on besides liking horror and having punk hair. There's no real substance there. She's appealing, I suppose, but...why the total freak out? Why the ongoing denial about her death?
This film has a lot of soft lighting. I don't get it. I realize the principle actors aren't so young anymore but they look like ghouls under this light. Even the naturally pretty Emma Roberts is washed out.
I'd forgotten how obnoxious these new characters are. Maybe it's a generational thing and I can't relate to modern kids. Or maybe this writing lacks something to be desired. So I can blame Kevin Williamson.
Alison Brie is wonderful and, like Sarah Michelle Gellar in part two, we're playing with the fact that we know Brie as the sweet natured Annie Edison. So, of course, she's playing a monstrous, callus bitch. Love it. Why can't we have more of that in this film? Instead we have irritating new characters and the old characters coming off as...well, old.
The Shawn of the Dead scene isn't bad. I like the "I never said I was in your closet" misdirect. It's actually a pretty good murder sequence. The girl-whatever her name is-proves pretty hard to kill. But it's actually a pretty solid kill scene. Giving credit where credit is due. It's already topped anything "Scream 3" had to offer. That's actually a LOT of blood.
I also like Sidney going right for killer and putting up a helluva fight. Great stuff, really.
I'm not sure why Alison Brie is killed. I guess it works similarly to the death of Henry Winkler in the original film: it's basically there because random murders are necessary for most slasher films. Y'know, and spoiler alert, you can tell the murderers are snotty teens. I wish Sidney was able to figure it out. The dialogue for the killer over the phone is amatuerish, childish stuff. I'm not saying that as a knock on the film-really, it's actually pretty smart-it's just a bit too obvious for my liking. Brie's death scene is a little hackneyed, but again...it might be part of the films style. Hard to say. It's not great.
The cinema club scene basically takes self-referential and shoves it up its own ass. It's not even remotely clever anymore. It also proves this movie has little to no idea what it's doing. I'm all for meta storytelling, but this is just ridiculous. I actually would prefer it if this actually were a remake or a sequel without the main characters. The show is doing it better, really. There's some solid winking going on with the series-I think, it really might just be bad- that somehow works better than this smug, confused mess of a film.
Luckily, I more or less like the spirit of the ending of this flick. I just gotta hang tough and get there. I mean, I remember the finale kinda being far too silly for its own good, but I remember liking the ideas behind it. Just gotta hold it together.
Yikes, that cop scene just falls right apart. I almost enjoyed it until the "fuck Bruce Willis" line.
I don't mind the concept of Sidney being a survivor basically meaning everybody else has to be dead. That's a decent hook for a film. Not this maybe remake/reboot/scream-quel or whatever the shit those idiot teens called it earlier...that stuff doesn't work. I feel like there is half a great film in here, but it keeps getting obscured by the need to be clever: and not subtle clever, but the clever that requires people to scream "LOOK HOW CLEVER I AM!"
Would it have been hard to make likable new characters? I know two of them are the actual villains, but the rest are just obnoxious. Maybe that's why Kirby was so popular? She's basically the only one who is somewhat likable...it would just help if she actually did anything. I mean, by comparison to these lame-ass characters she's incredible.
I hate the trivia scene. Hate it. First of all, rambling off a series of movies that have been remade isn't an answer to a question that wasn't fully asked. Second: Peeping Tom? Peeping Tom didn't start the slash craze. Peeping Tom was actually a failure, so it couldn't start any crazes whatsoever. Psycho wouldn't technically be the answer, either, but it's closer than Peeping Tom. They were released the same year, except Psycho was actually successful and widely watched. In reality, it was probably Halloween...Friday the 13th could be one, too. "A Bay of Blood."
I do like that Jill is the leader of all of it. The motive of fame is actually a pretty good one, too. It really is. Closest thing to a theme this film is able to muster. It's rather personal. I would enjoy it more if they didn't over-do it performance wise like so many other films. A better subversion would have been if Jill did things quietly. Instead she just screams all her lines. It's hackneyed and tired. I hate this manic nonsense. It's harder watching it four times in a row, too.
First time I watched this, I fell for the fake ending. I giggled at Jill's over-the-top injuring of herself (it still looks ridiculous) but still felt "Well, shit, this is dark" when I thought she'd get away with it. I found myself even feeling a little sick at the thought. How awful. Then they take it away and give us a happy ending which, while it was less dark and far more comfortable, I felt kind of undermined the film as a whole. Usually I rail against the "unearned downer ending" but I actually felt like "Scream 4" would have succeeded as a real subversion if the final girl and killer were the same and they let it ride. But they don't. It's just business as usual, really.
Final thoughts: Well, I think I just said it, really. The movie has its moments, some real grabs at greatness, but ultimately fails to put together a really strong film. If the ending had more guts, more restraint and had built a more satisfying arc for their characters (did Dewey and Gale really need to even be here? They provide little to the story as a whole) except for Sidney who actually does get some okay play here. As mentioned earlier, the concept of survivor girl as a death magnet is a pretty good one, and one that did ultimately play well with the reveal of Jill as the killer. Less of that silly "remake" stuff and more focus on character and story parallels would have been amazing. So, it got close, but yet remained so far from its goal. It does have those moments, though...it's considerably better than "Scream 3."
Final rating: Two and a half stars.
And so ends the Wes Craven beginning of my year of horror movie project. Not the best way to end it. But it could be worse.
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