[Dictated but not read]
There isn’t really much of a reason for Scream 4 to exist, just as there isn’t for most horror sequels in particular. Look to the post-Scream Saw franchise, which devolved into a narratively incoherent death spiral once perpetuation grew more essential than purpose. For that, or most other horror sequels, the only point is usually to deliver audiences a calming, familiar thrill like what they’ve seen before. It’s soothing, but it doesn’t make for good horror, and longevity kills whatever strength the original idea might have had. Too bad, too, since well-financed horror is now unlikely to happen unless it has that guarantee of the familiar. So even while horror franchises are played out in one continuity, reboots and remakes and re-whatnots still apply, a kind of horror-wide meta-cycle of cannibalizing self-defeat, making one question just what the future of horror possesses.
A variation on this very argument lies at the heart of Scream 4, which uses the eleven-year interim since the useless Scream 3 to remark upon what horror has done in response to Scream. To that end, the in-film Stab franchise (now up to Stab 7, with no exact real world parallel, save for the Screams, which haven’t this particular longevity) have created a world much like ours, where teenaged audiences are just as aware of discussing “meta” post-modernism itself as a thing, rather than merely employing it. (By the way, it’s implied a Stab 3 did eventually get made, possibly a fictionalization of the failed Stab 3 production in Scream 3 – which is perhaps a self-imploding notion beyond even the purely fictional Screams’ realm…or something.) But since the Stabs diverge from the actuality of the Scream franchise, they serve as a warning for writer Kevin Williamson, to point out the pitfalls of excessive self-reference.
It’s long been the Screams’ onus, and bizarre privilege, that they are as aware of their potential flaws as we are. As the first Scream states, “slasher movies are dumb, as is this one, but we know it.” Now it says, “Excessive self-reference is a bottomless pit without end, and once it invades cinema as a whole, the problem exacerbates.” You could say this about Scream 4, that while it lambasts the purposelessness of Saw IV (rightfully called “dumb” – though ya should’ve picked on V instead, guys…), and lists the proliferation of modern horror remakes, it also possesses many of the same problems as them. Then you can take a step back, and say since Scream 4 exemplifies those problems, it makes us aware of them in a way, say, Halloween circa 2007 doesn’t. Just like it’s arguable Scream 3 sucks by design; Scream 4 isn’t remotely that soulless, but it’s still a strange, over-stuffed, purposeless beast.
Remakes (and reboots) become the name of the game. Necessary, too, for each new entry must redefine how it relates back to franchising as a whole: Scream just the genre (horror), Scream 2 sequels, Scream 3 trilogies, Scream 4 remakes. Which has a pertinence beyond mere reiteration of repetition, like a standard Part Four. And from the perspective of the Ghostface killers (yeah, it’s two, we know that’s comin’, which is the point even), the 2011 Woodsboro Massacre is a remake of its 1996 cousin. By that definition, there are variations on old scenes, the killers stabbing each other to appear as victims, or the bound and gagged red herring suspect – moments at once familiar, but with a new twist, as many a remake presents to us.
But Scream 4 is still in the same continuity as the other three, so it isn’t a remake, not in a pure sense. Which is needed, for its characters to be aware it is a remake – otherwise, they’d have no notion of Stab 1/Scream 1. So it’s a reboot, too, in the sense that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or Live Free and Die Hard is a reboot – that is, unlike Batman Begins or Casino Royale, the timeline isn’t shredded, but nostalgic events are presented to us largely for that nostalgia value. Meaning Scream 4 has a value now in 2011 by dint of its distance from 2000’s Scream 3, while with time that value might wane. In the story, it’s certainly a nostalgic reunion for the series’ three perpetual survivors, Sidney Prescott (Neve “I Can’t Name Anything Noteworthy Since Scream 3” Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courtney “Up Yours, I’m In ‘Cougar Town’” Cox), and Dewey Riley (David “Whatever” Arquette). Boiling the plot down once and for all, they’re back in Woodsboro, as the present teenaged populace faces the deadly Ghostface remakes.
Nostalgia, for as essential as it’s been for much recent cinematic pilfering, plays a major part in Scream 4’s success – It cannot work without reference to its older kin. Truly, Scream 4 doesn’t really echo any of the stylistic excesses of more recent phenomenon – torture pornography is mostly name-dropped, then tossed aside, and it doesn’t seem like a Platinum Dunes remake either (that is, it isn’t horridly blue ‘n’ teal). This is perhaps the challenge of defining future Scream sequels…Their mission statement is to comment upon the state of (horror) cinema, but they’re forever wedded to aping the slasher tropes of the 1980s – because this is the format 1996’s Scream chose for itself. And now, when truly I can say Scream 4 is more thoroughly dedicated to self-commentary than any other in the series, it’s a hindrance that it must forever phrase those ideas in the milieu of knife murders.
It’s possible to define the Screams without reference to their post-modernism. Under that definition, we focus upon Ghostface as a stalker of mass media. He bullies with phone technology. The gadget-crazed are endlessly impressed at the last decades’ technological innovation (as if that’s anything new), leaving Ghostface with a new(ish) realm to explore – cellular telephone machine technology gives way to Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, web streaming, blogs (erp?!)… This isn’t actually a gigantic focus of Scream 4, as that’d be to miss the greater reflexive commentary for the ornamental details.
Ah, but that idea’s still there, another thread to add onto Scream 4’s overtaxed shoulders, along with exploring the Stab franchise, our heroes lives these past ten years, the nature of remakes, the nature of reboots, general media commentary, and a dozen new faces who all get to fall to the blade. Oh, plus give all this enough actual pertinence to old events, so that again a duo of multiple murderers is driven to kill specifically as an act of revenge against Sidney Prescott – her mere existence now inspires psychopaths.
No doubt Scream 4 is too caught up in juggling assorted ideas, accumulated in time from the once-simple notion of “What if characters in a horror movie had seen other horror movies?” It’s like how Saw went from “Two dudes awake shackled in a restroom” to “Multiple generations of ironic gadget masters train each other to spread a twist-heavy social message.” In its way, Scream is very much like Saw…Each series feels the need to repeat twist endings in every entry, which patently gets in the way of telling a story naturally. There is some effort from each to be at least marginally clever. Each piles on the threads and expectations with each sequel, and has grown beyond the confines of what was once a trilogy.
What Scream hasn’t done is grow entirely beyond what it’s capable of saying, lest it enter the realm of the alluded-to Stab 5, with its time travel antics. That’s a weird sort of throwaway gag in Williamson’s script (or possibly one of those danged uncredited Ehren Kruger rewrites, because still Williamson’s stupid TV career – “The Vampire Diaries” – keeps him legally limited from doing his own Scream movies). But a Scream’s throwaways, when they seem cinema-pertinent, are not to be dismissed, especially since there’s been some hint that 4 might engender an imminent Scream 5 and 6 – a second trilogy, like nothing else except the Stars Wars prequels, provided this one is successful enough. It’s hard to picture what sort of over-arcing meta-text could follow the “remake”…possibly the “remake’s sequel,” to show you how dumb further Screams appear at present.
…Nah, all that seems unlikely. Scream 4, though well-intentioned in its remake fervor, isn’t doing the sort of business it needs to continue on. It frankly doesn’t seem pertinent to contemporary horror movies, even if it comments upon their greater development, partly because the Scream style itself isn’t stylish any more. That need to be a sequel to a 1996 movie kills its chances to comment upon current trends directly to audiences of those trends. Without knowing the films already, there’s little entry point here. Oh, the movie’s simple enough on is basic level – watch people get murdered – but that offers little to a viewer without the necessary ability to connect with its subtextual game. You gotta know Scream, gotta recognize parallels and internal self-subversions, which necessarily shuns a large part of the audience. Which is the nature of such a metatextual beast in the first place.
It’s telling that so much could be said of Scream 4 without ever addressing the new victim roster, the teens who would be expected to be the access for new horror junkies – new viewers just now coming to Scream’s awareness in a climate which has regularized that awareness. As a remake, we get unofficial parallels and escalations. Sidney’s cousin is Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts), and knowing simply she’s the Final Girl is enough substitute for a personality, not when Sidney’s still sorta claiming that spot. Though at film’s end, maybe that’s the point…Hmm…
Otherwise, we get the “hot girl” who dies as when first’s hot girl did…only it doesn’t really read that way, not until the film’s characters insist upon it – one of them insisting upon this forced remake read almost too strongly, almost as though he knew the killer’s intentions…Hmm…
And the nerd types, the Randies – now seemingly tripled, with double duty falling first to film club masterminds Robbie (Erik Knudsen) and Charlie (Rory Culkin), and Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) revealing herself later on to be the female equivalent of that trope – and fulfilling whatever “hot girl” duties the presumably more Tatum-esque deceased girl possessed.
Yeah, it’s another murder mystery, with too many characters vying for that spot as the killer. We discount some, like the boyfriend, simply because that twist’s been done before – and “the unexpected is the new cliché,” a fancy way of saying “We got new twists, unless that’s expected, meaning rather we’re recycling old twists, only maybe we’re not, so really, fuck it.” Yeah, the “virgins can die now” thing, the “homosexuals are safe” thing, that’s all old hat – as old as Scream-copying Cherry Falls, at least, though pre-Screams did all this too – as Williamson’s latest “rules” aren’t wholly indicative of the actual genre today, like, at all. Where was I? Oh right, the killer. So…SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS.
Obviously, I’m not gonna reveal who all is killin’ folk in a movie that’s but a few days old. I’ll still attempt some commentary on how the reveal goes down. The motive is the same as always – excepting the ever-present “revenge against Sidney for some damn reason,” we get the classic media whorism. Picture Rebecca Friday as a psychopathic killer, and there you go! It’s as loopy as the former three, and as much a strange and undercooked media satire – all in all, perfectly in fitting with the franchise.
And on survivors…Well, I feel bold enough to say, without names, that three characters are guaranteed to live through the movie. Three characters who’ve proven so totally immortal throughout the series – when Ghostface’s knife is instantly fatal to lesser characters, able to stab a spine or heart or freaking brain through the skull (yeah, the gore is a tad more permissive this time), the same sort of attack upon these unnamed three is barely effective at all. Really, these people, these survivors, resemble the horror icons of yore far better than Ghostface ever did – and we’re now on the seventh person to assume the shrouds now. At least there’s some acknowledgement (perhaps by director Wes Craven instead of either scribe) of the fact…towards the end, one of the unnamed survivors is compared to Michael Myers. Five seconds later, said character performs an attack that is recognizably a Myers special – the thumb-to-the-eye from Halloween 4, proof I’ve watch too many of these movies myself. It flips the tables, showing the heroes in stalker mode, and the villain in victim mode. But I’ve perhaps hinted too much as the ending with these musings, so I’ll quit it now.
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Scream (1996)
• No. 2 Scream 2 (1997)
• No. 3 Scream 3 (2000)
Ghostfacekiller said…
HEY, RANDOM BLOGGER. NICE POST. BY THE WAY, WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SCARY MOVIE?
April 18, 2001, 4:45 PM
…
What?
…Oh I get it. This is an effort to fold back in on ourselves, like the Screams (or Stabs, if you will), and imbue this blog with the same sort of awareness. And my pointing that out is just another layer, as is my pointing out of my pointing out, as is my poi- Okay, I’ll stop that. But you don’t fool me, alleged “killer,” because that’s not quite a perfect recreation of a comment. For one thing, part of it is clearly an image, and – DO YOU WANT TO DIE? …Okay, I don’t even know how you’re doing that. To answer your question, obviously I don’t want to, but –
LOOK, IF YOU KEEP ON EQUIVOCATING USELESSLY, I’M GONNA GUT YOU LIKE A COW RIGHT NOW!!!
People gut cows? Whatever, I’m just going to post this and – YOU HIT THAT “PUBLISH POST” BUTTON AND YOU’RE!
Ah, very clever. But there’s no real end to such commentary. I make some witty rejoinder indicating I know everything you’re doing, then you say you know I would say that, and we keep going on in such a way like pointing a camera at the screen that’s recording its recording and –
Yeah, that’s exactly my point (though that is Photoshop, you lazy bum). I can see how this is pertinent for Scream 4, which boasts something like two extended false endings itself, and acknowledges that it’s doing it, which doesn’t negate the problem, and makes it a damn hard thing to conclusively end, meaning things are just a string of run-on sentences which eventually cut off all of a su
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