DVD Reviews

Scream 4 – Blu-ray Review

By Dana Rae Oct 17, 2011, 14:22 GMT

In Scream 4, Sidney Prescott, now the author of a self-help book, returns home to Woodsboro on the last stop of her book tour. There she reconnects with Sheriff Dewey and Gale, who are now married, as well as her cousin Jill (played by Emma Roberts) and her Aunt Kate (Mary McDonnell). Unfortunately Sidney’s appearance also brings about the return of Ghost Face, putting Sidney, Gale, and Dewey, along with ...more

In a clever opening sequence that involves the made-up horror movie franchise “Stab,” which is based on the books written by Scream character Gale Weathers-Riley (Courteney Cox), two high schools girls, Sherrie and Trudie (Lucy Hale and Shenae Grimes), are stalked and then brutally killed by Ghostface .

This is actually the opening scene to "Stab 6", which Rachel and Chloe (Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell) are watching. Rachel goes on and on about horror movie clichés and her friend Chloe produces a knife and stabs her twice in the stomach. Some friend. You talk too much, she says, as Rachel is gasping for breath.

This happens to be the opening to "Stab 7", in which Jenny and Marnie (Aimee Teegarden and Britt Robertson) are watching. After Jenny pranks Marnie, she is killed. Jenny is threatened over the phone by a voice, and then chased through the house by Ghostface himself, leading to her untimely death in the garage by way of being squashed by the garage door as she tries to escape.

Anyone who is familiar with the Scream franchise knows that Neve Campbell has made her fame, fortune, and bread and butter from these movies. She has been poor Sidney Prescott in the trilogy of them and Sidney has survived to be in yet another one. Hence the name Scream 4. In the clever way just described above, it is a movie within a movie, and a franchise within a franchise, and Scream gives birth to the Stab series.

But that is as clever as this fourth installment gets. It goes downhill from there, poking fun at its own humble beginnings, and the audience will more than likely get bored quickly. I know I did.

The premise is that it has been ten years since the events known as "The Woodsboro Massacre," and our heroine and survivor Sidney Prescott returns to her hometown as the last stop on her book-signing tour. She has written a book about her overcoming the past events of the Scream movies. Yet the past events still haunt her, and coming back to her hometown is very painful.

Things start to go not so well when Dewey Riley (David Arquette), who is now the town's sheriff, interrupts the signing. He claims that the murder of Jenny and Marnie are linked to a cell phone somewhere in the bookstore.

Poor, misunderstood Dewey. He’s a good guy and all … Arquette is perfect in the role of perhaps the not-so-bright public official caught up in surmounting events. The ringing phone is found in the trunk of Sidney's car, along with bloody handprints.

While Dewey, with the best of intentions, goes about trying to find out what is going on, the news gets out, of course. Gale Riley (Cox, who was Arquette’s real life wife and they were, ironically, getting a divorce at the time), gets back to her old reporter roots and becomes obsessed with the case.

Dewey doesn’t support her efforts (Gale and Dewey apparently don’t have the best of marriages) and in an effort to be in the spotlight again (perhaps hog it), she starts to investigate what happened.

At this point I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if Gale were the killer?” But Gale is a red herring and not the killer. Don’t even think that. She’s clean.

Dewey assigns a patrol to the place where Sidney will be staying, which is the residence of her aunt Kate (Mary McDonnell), and cousin Jill (Emma Roberts, who is Eric Roberts’ daughter, just an interesting side note).
It is here that Sidney goes to her cousin's room, only to see her cousin's ex-boyfriend Trevor (Nico Tortorella) sneaking out a nearby window after Jill has asked him to leave. Enter thought: Could Trevor be the killer?

Jill and her friend Kirby (Hayden Panettiere, Heroes), who sports a really awful hair-do, are watching a movie, when Kirby gets a call from someone sounding like Ghostface. The voice claims he's hiding in the closet, and Kirby and her hair-do check, but find no one there. In the house next door, their friend Olivia (Marielle Jaffe) is brutally killed.

Sidney hears what's going on, and breaks into Olivia's place, attempting to stop the killer. However, he escapes just as the police arrive, of course. What would be the fun in that if he were caught by the police? Enter thought: Wouldn’t this be cool if Sidney were actually crazy and she were the killer? After all, she has been through a lot…four movies of this sort of thing.

Sidney is taken to the local hospital to be checked out, but is upset when her book publicist Rebecca (Alison Brie, Mad Men) claims that these new killings can help the sales of Sidney's books. Sidney fires Rebecca on the spot. Rebecca goes to the facility's parking garage to leave and we as the audience know that deserted underground parking lots are horror movie happy places.

She is stalked and then killed, in a terribly ironically way because she had her cell phone right there with her in the car. She could have at least dialed 911 or something equally brilliant. So that illuminates the annoying money-grubbing publicist from being the killer because her body is thrown off the top of the garage onto the roof of a nearby news van. That would be kind of hard to fake if she were the one doing the deed.

Gale is still trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, and convinces Sidney to come with her to the local 'Cinema Club' at the high school, run by Charlie Walker (Rory Culkin) and Robbie Mercer (Erik Knudsen).

The two claim that if the killer is attempting to kill people in a 'remake' fashion. While some things may be similar, the killer's style is not going to be exactly like the first time, and that to make the situation even more intense, they may even be recording the murders to post them on the internet.

Could these two be the killers? Remember in Scream 1 how shocked we were that there were not one but two killers? Two annoying high school kids…hmmm…it has merit, but no. It’s been done and they are not the killers.

Charlie and Robbie immediately think that the killer may strike at their upcoming 'Stab-a-Thon,' where they'll run all the movies in the 'Stab' series (based on the original murders). Gale is still trying to be a good reporter and continues to do her own investigation without Dewey’s blessing.

She, not being of the teenage crowd and not knowing where the party will be, manages to find the location, and sets up cameras to view what is going on. The cameras add a special touch to the filming as you see through them at certain points.

As she watches from her car, the cameras start to get covered up as someone sprays them with black paint. Gale calls her much put-upon husband Dewey (he has so much on his plate being sheriff and all), and attempts to fix the camera in the rafters. She finds across a remote webcam and is eliminated as a suspect because she gets stabbed.

The killer, whomever he may be, has once again eluded capture once again and Gale, with Dewey’s help, survives and it taken to the local hospital. Ghostface continues his (or her) rampage until at the end, the face behind the mask is revealed and the killer starts to rant and rave about never being good enough, never being in the spotlight. At that point I thought I might have stumbled upon an episode of Scooby Doo.

So who is the killer? No spoilers here. But you as the audience could probably figure out that Scream 4 will play off of its former glory. And that is part of the fun and the thrill, to see what nods the movie will give itself. It might become a bit tedious to watch since so much relies of a fan base that knows and get all of the internal jokes, or nods, if you will.

While not entirely horrible, it’s not great horror, it’s not even really good horror. It might be entertaining to doze off to, but it won’t make you jump or even spend much timing guessing who Ghost face is this time around. Not Sidney, and that was, to me, disappointing.