The saga of the infamous killer “Ghostface” finally comes to terms with its generic horror.
Artwork by Ed Gloor
The latest addition to the Scream saga, Scream 4, hit the theatres with a new approach to entertain its audience: a little bit of screaming and a whole lot of parody. This being the fourth Scream movie that Gale Riley (Courtney Cox Cougar Town 2009), Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell Scream 3 2000), and Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette Eight Legged Freaks 2002), star in, I felt that there would be a recurring theme to be observed in this “new” horror flick.
To spice up the mood, instead of taking the same-old formula of the previous Scream movies too seriously, the producers decided to make Scream 4 a parody of itself, very similar to Scary Movie (2000), a parody of the original Scream. With characters such as two horror movie geeks, Charlie Walker (Rory Culkin Twelve 2010) and Robbie Mercer (Eric Knudson Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 2010), making fun of the generic plot, this made the movie a little more on the cheesy side of horror: the hot blonde always dies first, the killer constantly asking “what’s your favorite scary movie?” and that there is always a party where the killer makes his big killing debut, with the partiers.
Overall the movie did not excite me; at least not entirely. There were the occasional jumps I would get from the typical horror flick ‘pop-out’, where Ghostface would kill someone unexpectedly, but not once throughout the movie did I actually feel nervous or scared. One would expect a movie saga to progressively get better; the Scream saga has progressively gotten more pathetic.
The first time I watched the original Scream, there was an element of fear and seriousness; a scene from Scream 4 involves the town becoming frightened by dolls of Ghostface being draped from light posts, during the daytime. That to me is an utter disappointment.
Once the movie revealed the killers, Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts The Art of Getting By 2011) and video geek Charlie Walker, there was an interesting twist in the plot: the movie turned from cheesy horror to psychotic envy. This involved Jill purposely hurting herself by ramming into walls and ripping hair off her scalp, all in an attempt to frame her boyfriend, Trevor Sheldon (Nico Tortorella Twelve 2010), as the killer. There was no real suspense like other horror movies, or any true fright. Along with the parody going on in the movie, there was an element of oddity in this almost twisted horror-flick. Only a whack-job character like Jill Roberts would kill all her friends and bring herself to near death just for the attention. What kind of killer had the producers made in Scream 4? A jealous, psychotic, high school girl killer. I saw this as merely entertaining, but definitely not frightening in any sense.
If I were to label the genre into which the new Scream movie falls, it would be satirical horror. The way it followed the typical horror movie formula proved to disappointment to me, because my expectations were for a new plot and plenty of fright. If anyone is interested in viewing Scream 4, I highly suggest waiting until it’s shown on TV; wasting $10.50 is not worth the cheesy “new” horror flick.
★★☆☆☆
