This will be the last one I use “in which” with because that’s just going to get old after awhile, am I right, guys? I mean, it really limits my headline writing options and if there’s one thing I’m good at it’s coming up with headlines!
That’s totally a good superpower by the way; I’m willing to bet Clark Kent wasn’t even as good as I am at writing headlines, and he worked for a “greater metropolitan newspaper”!
Headline writing aside, let’s get to the real topic: Horror movies! “‘Tis the season” as they say and oh what a season it is. For the entire month of October we’re just oversaturated with vampires, zombies, werewolves, serial killers, spiders, bats, scary jack-o-lanterns and scary women wearing slutty costumes (that last one being the scariest of them all). It’s also a time when stores try to offload their back stocked horror movie collection and you can pick up a good, or so bad it’s good, movie for fairly cheap. Fortunately, this also means Redbox has a bigger horror movie selection and while browsing through their library this past weekend, the girlfriend and I happened across Scream 4, the not so long awaited fourth installment in the Scream franchise. Needless to say, we were apprehensive, but pleasantly surprised.
All the main “stars” are back: Courtney Cox (that one chick from Friends), David Arquette (that dude she’s married to) and Neve Campbell (that one chick from Party of Five). It’s ten years after the events of Scream 3 and Sydney is recovering well from her traumatic experience by promoting a new book about her ordeal. When she comes back to promote it in her home town, however, a brand new set of murders begin and the mystery of whodunit runs wild. Luckily the movie returns to its self-aware roots with lots of nods to obvious horror movie clichés both obvious and mentioned by characters on screen, as well as those that go unmentioned but are still apparent to horror movie fans. You have your obligatory celebrity cameo death at the beginning (this time it’s Anna Paquin of True Blood and X-Men with Kristen Bell of Veronica Mars and Heroes doing the killing). Then there’s the couple of “red herring” suspects that are too obvious to be the killer, the ability of main characters to fight off and elude death while minor characters die all too easily, and let’s not forget the big surprise reveal at the end with the killer being not only more than one person but two people you never saw coming. Cliché, cliché, cliché; but the movie is constantly winking at you, tongue in cheek style like “See what I did there?” It knows what it’s doing and that, just as the original, is what makes this movie surprisingly good.
However, there are complaints. The writing is a bit rough in spots and the “movie within a movie within a movie” at the beginning made me groan a little. My biggest gripe, though, is the ending.
Oh God, the ending. Rant Incoming.
WARNING 1: SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD…BETTER BAIL NOW IF YOU CARE TOO MUCH!
WARNING 2: PREPARE FOR LOTS OF GENDER DISGUISING PRONOUNS!
The killer proceeds to make it look like they were, in fact, the hero. They smash their face into a mirror, drops themselves through a table, stab themselves in the shoulder, shoot the person they’re framing, all to make it look like a struggle and that they were the only one who survived. She even kills a main character! Refreshingly Shocking! Then in the final minutes it appears that the killer is going to get away with it and become an interesting plot device for what could be a revived franchise; the survivor who was really the killer, great twist right?
Think again True Believers!
In what appears to be a scene that’s tacked on, the killer is found out while they’re in the hospital recovering. Oh, and that main character that was apparently killed? Still clinging to life, despite the horrible stab wounds that would have killed any other character in the movie. So our killer must climb out of their hospital bed and hunt down the only witness…they die in the process…justice is served. I can only assume that this scene was added after test screenings showed that audiences wanted a happier ending; just goes to show that your mainstream audience wouldn’t know innovative and intriguing if it stabbed them in the face…this is why Hollywood is dying and running out of original ideas. On top of that, after doing a bit of research, I found that there were a lot of script issues and many scenes shown in trailers that were cut, most of which sound like they would have made the movie better overall, what a disappointment. They had such a good opportunity to revive this series and have it be the awesome bit of film the original once was!
We didn’t have a chance to browse the DVD extras but I certainly hope that there’s a version on the disc that doesn’t have that ending. Not that it would be canon…but I’d be happier about it.
So, while the ending annoys me to no end, I still enjoyed it and recommend it to all you horror fans out there! 4 Stabbity Stabs out of 5.
Till next time Halloweenies!
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