This is the newest entry into the wildly popular Scream franchise which pretty much single-handedly revitalized the once-ailing horror genre, with its fresh new faces and hip new lingo. Scream 4 stars Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courtney Cox (are they still married?). In addition to the aforementioned, this film also showcases a lot of young talent whose characters are so poorly developed that it doesn't matter when they die. I understand this movie nods its head toward the newer, grosser, torture-porn elements of the new millenial horror, but I kind of think that part's kind of dumb: there are too many victims, each in a far too clearly-contrived death-scenario. The characters were all cliches, but you can only go so far with character-types before you inevitably begin being duplicates. Speaking of cliches, as the original series that poked fun at the quintessential horror-movie cliches, which later poked fun at itself for having too many self-aware qualities, that element of these films has now itself become a cliche. And that disappoints me.

In this movie, Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to Woodsboro (on the ten-year anniversary of her trauma) for a book signing. People start dying, each victim slashed, hacked, and otherwise brutalized by Ghostface: it's pretty run-of-the-mill as far as that is concerned. Scream 4 had a great twist at the end, but still too many stupid high-schoolers for my overall enjoyment.

Randy, in Scream 2, said it best: "If it gets too complicated, you lose your target audience." Unless the new target audience is a bunch of teenagers, that is.  If that's the case, good job Scream 4, you hit the nail squarely on the head.

It is with good faith, and my love of the horror genre in general, that I give this movie a rating of .75.

 Artie

PS - The new millenium sucks and that quality is reflected in our media.