You might have thought enough time had passed between Scream 3 (which presumably closed out a
trilogy) and Scream 4 (which
attempted to cash in on the resurgence of the horror genre) that writer Kevin
Williamson could have found a newly fresh take on the genre. The first film in
the series was undoubtedly remarkable for managing to skewer the genre, calling
attention to itself and its absurd tropes, and at the same time be a skillfully
crafted addition to the horror canon thanks to the direction of Wes Craven.
Craven returned to helm the third sequel, which would suggest a belief
somewhere that it was worth returning to the franchise more than a decade
later.
The action returns to the original fictional town of
Woodsboro, where the next generation of teenagers has grown up on post-ironic
horror films as well as the fictional Stab
series which is supposed to be based on the events of the Scream films. Scream 4
opens promisingly, although you don’t realize it for several minutes. A
hackneyed dialogue between two teenage girls as they receive threatening phone
calls and Facebook messages from a stalker is revealed to be the opening of Stab 6, being watched by two other young
women (one of them played by Anna Paquin), which is then revealed as the
opening of Stab 7 being watched by
two teenagers who are, in fact, characters in Scream 4. Ignoring the metaphysical paradox when you work out the
logic, it is an opening that outdoes itself.
