Archive for April 15, 2011

Scream 4 (Scre4m) Review No Spoilers

After ten years of safety, Sidney, Dewey and Gale must once again race against time to figure out who the killer is before it’s too late.

Today I went to see Scream 4 (Scre4m).  I was so nervous it would be sold out that I rushed to the cinema over an hour in advanced and had to wait around after buying my ticket.  There ended up only being around twenty people in the cinema.  Am I mad about it?  No, because the movie was amazing.

It’s tradition for a Scream movie to start by killing off someone famous in a really cool opening death sequence.  This time they took it a step further; reminding fans that there’s still some comedy left in the franchise.  From the get go, you can really feel just how much thought and effort has gone into this film.

A lot has happened between the third and fourth movies.  Sidney has written a book about how to stop being a victim, Dewey has become sheriff and Gale’s given up being a reporter and is suffering from writer’s block which is preventing her starting her new book.  As the film opens, Sidney is returning to Woodsboro, were Dewey and Gale are living, as part of her book tour.  Arriving back in her home town brings on more nostalgia than she’d have liked as killings begin yet again.

The movie was extremely well done and I honestly didn’t see the end coming.  I suspected nearly everyone at one stage or another.  The theme of the film is remakes/reboots.  If sales go well this is planned to be the start of a new trilogy.  Though the movie isn’t actually a reboot, if you look out, you won’t need to look very hard, you’ll notice that some elements are reminiscent of the original films.  As a fan of the first three, this sense of déjà vu was very much appreciated. 

They did a great job missing the new with the old, as both generations of the story pieced together very well.  It’s been a long time since the first movies and the rules have changed.  Forget virgins surviving and black people dying first, the new rules are simple basically the only way to survive is by being gay.

Revisiting the original trio is great and it’s clear that Sidney really has stopped being a victim.  She’s a fighter now, but will it be enough to ensure her survival yet again?  What do you think?  Let me know by voting and leaving a comment below. 

If you want to watch the film without any spoilers I recommending seeing it as soon as possible as the identity of the killer has already leaked onto the web.  I managed to avoid finding out and it made the film much more enjoyable.

Just wanted to put this on the end, I’ve seen the third Scream movie many times and didn’t realise this until my friend said it when we re-watched it last night.  The film ends in a cliff-hanger; what movie are they going to watch?  It never says and they didn’t even answer it in the fourth one.