'Scream IV' not just another scary movie

Wes Craven strikes again but this time the iron is so far from hot your tongue would stick to it. Despite just missing the top box office spot on its opening weekend this one is worth seeing. Albeit a world of remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings, another Scream movie was the last thing on my radar. The film series started in 1996 with the original 'Scream' that promised two sequels and in total a decent trilogy. The films were their own parodies placing you inside a world where not only are the characters aware of the rules of scary movies but the writer Kevin Williamson uses them to foreshadow it's own plots.

Scream 4 opens with two fake openings later learned to be scenes from 'Stab 6' and 'Stab 7', the fictional horror movie franchise originated in an earlier Scream film. If you follow the rules set out by screenwriting maven Sid Field then this movie is perfect having set up the entire film in the first ten minutes. The death of the four attractive, ditzy, scary movie watching, overly aware and annoyingly smug teens inadvertently prognosticated the main plot of the film as it led into the death of the first two actual characters. Just prior to their deaths they asked what a horror movie would have to do to reinvent itself. Well without spoilers that is what Scream IV does.

Today Oscar winners and rock stars, aging filmmakers and newbies cast their nets into the deep ocean of classic scary movies and remake them. Wes Craven gives us Scream IV and asks, "what if Scream could remake itself?" The standard filmmaking and narrative conventions are unaltered here and the characters follow the very archetypes these films strive to mock. The blond that should not open the door but does anyway; the buddy cops guarding the house. But the stand out performance is Williamson's script. With the use of the fictional 'Stab' movies as a kind of Hitchcockian macguffin, it creates the standard equation but the variables are aware that they are in an equation. The cops that go into the dark alley know that they would be dead, "in a horror movie" This suspends disbelief for you and your enjoyment is now based exclusively on the characters.

This is what categorizes this film in the end. A film like this tends to have little character development and Scream IV is no different. This itself is a fact satirized by the movie as it clings to the hope that fans of the original films can find some measure of depth in the characters they have come to love creating a kind of deciding factor. You will enjoy this film if you enjoyed the original. As for non-fans it is the definition of insanity to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. If you did not like the original you will not like this one. Do not go and see it. For those of you on the fence ask yourself if you can actually remember Freddy 4 or Jason 4 or Halloween 4 and if you care. In that answer is the answer to whether or not you should see this.

In the end this is Scream 4 and that is about it. I liked it as i liked the others and was happy to reconnect with my favorite psycho magnets from Woodsboro.