advertisement

'Scream 4' amps up the gore

I realize that “Scream 4” is supposed to be a self-aware post-modernistic comic horror film, because two soon-to-be skewered blondes tell us this in the film's fatal opening segment.

But must all the characters in “Scream 4” be as clueless as the camping teens in “Friday the 13th,” when they're supposed to be aware of the very horror film clichés that they're now propagating?

Take Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott, who has already survived longer than most of her peers from three previous “Scream” movies. She should be proud of her track record and cash in her chips.

Sidney is in a house when she sees a reflection of a dark silhouette behind her.

Does she run? Call the cops? Arm herself?

Nope.

She investigates and, finding nobody, simply shrugs and goes about her business, despite the fact that she just saw someone in her house while a sadistic serial killer wearing a ghostface mask is butchering the good people of Woodsboro.

The “Scream” movies have finally exhausted writer/producer Kevin Williamson's original premise to parody mad slasher movie clichés while simultaneously entertaining us with those very same elements.

Creative rigor mortis has set in.

Instead of fresh and clever tweaks to our expectations, “Scream 4” piles on complications and ramps up the ick factor.

Instead of one campy introductory sequence, “Scream 4” gives us one campy introductory sequence within another campy introductory sequence within another campy introductory sequence.

Instead of simple, bloody knife murders, “Scream 4” gives us geysers of blood sprayed over walls and pooling on floors. In one graphic scene, a stabbed woman's intestines spill out on a bed (an act replicated later by partying kids using fake entrails at a celebration of the ghostface killings).

These elements will no doubt be appreciated by Craven's more hard-core horror fans, but they're mostly a case of coagulated creativity.

A new wave of bloody terror begins when Sidney returns to promote her self-help book, “Out of the Darkness.”

Former reporter-turned-novelist Gale (Courteney Cox), married to Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette), is insanely jealous of Sidney's success on the book tour.

Sidney moves in with her dear Aunt Kate (Mary McDonnell) and perky cousin Jill (Emma Roberts), a high school student who hangs with her buds, among them Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) and Olivia (Marielle Jaffe).

When two classmates are killed in Woodsboro, panic sets in, and Craven, the director of all “Scream” films, sets in motion the familiar scenario of “the killer could be anyone!” with a palpable paranoia that has become his stock-in-trade.

If anything, grisly, visceral stabbings are Craven's best asset, with the gore flying and that fake audio effect schiiiiing! sounding like a blade that has just been pulled out of a metal sheath instead of thrust into raw muscle and bone.

Eleven years have passed since the last “Scream” sequel, and Williamson's anti-formula formula hasn't aged well. Neither have the cast members who play their characters with such mechanical joylessness that I really didn't care if they survived.

Or if the ghostface killer did Woodsboro a favor by thinning the ranks of its more boring citizens.

Gale (Courteney Cox) becomes aware she's watching somebody watch her in the self-aware comic horror film "Scream 4."

“Scream 4”

★ ★

<b>Cast: </b>Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts, Mary McDonnell, Hayden Panettiere

<B>Directed by: </b>Wes Craven

<B>Other: </b>A Weinstein Company release. Rated R for graphic violence, sexual situations, language, teen drinking. 103 minutes.