But SCREAM 4 is 111 minutes long, and you should absolutely see the first ten minutes of this film. That's where Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven try to bury the ghost of the reflexive horror genre they helped create, and promise a return to the scares-first type of horror that kept you awake as a child.
The reason you don't really need to see the next 101 minutes is that they never really succeed at that.
Let's back up for a moment, though. I used to find it odd that the brothers Wayans felt like SCARY MOVIE needed to exist. I mean, SCREAM was funny. It was satire. I always felt like the Wayans just pushed SCREAM a little further to the margins when they made SCARY MOVIE (what they were doing with the next 5 SCARY MOVIE films, I can't begin to guess). Looking back on it though, it makes a little more sense to me.
The great trick of the first SCREAM is, of course, how it functions as both satire and the thing it satirizes. It constantly functions as both a legitimate horror film and a critique of horror films, something that the sequels struggle with and often fluctuate between, delineating one scene as the "funny" scene, and the next as the "reflexive" scene. The signifier of this tonal shift is usually the presence of Jamie Kennedy. I'm just speculating here, but I think an enterprising individual could make a drinking game out of this thematic fluctuation that would probably make SCREAM 2 slightly more tolerable (and drown the memories of THE JAMIE KENNEDY EXPERIMENT at the same time).
All of this is to say I can now understand the existence of SCARY MOVIE. The deaths in SCREAM are truly horrific. SCARY MOVIE bypassed all that satire and aimed to make a spoof of those horrific elements. The image of Drew Barrymore gutted and tied up in the tree swing is the sort of thing that sticks with you. Ditto with Rose McGowan trapped in the garage doggy door. The sequels' uncertainty about their satirical intent dull these moments of true horror, and make everything feel removed and repetitive.
The same problems exist with SCREAM 4, although the beginning seems to promise an end to this sort of reflexive repetitiveness. Williamson pulls the rug out from underneath the audience's feet twice in the opening ten minutes, scripting a film-within-a-film-within-a-film that made me cackle with the sheer ballsiness of it all. It perfectly encapsulates both the appeal and the problems of post-modern awareness in film, and ends with a character ranting about how you don't care about any of the people in these films. It's easy to see this as a direct address from Wes Craven to the audience as he surveys the world he helped create, where the outrageousness of the kills trumps any kind of meaning or feeling.
Unfortunately, the script never really delivers on this promise to return us to that mode of filmmaking. The first half hour starts to function in this mode, but then, in what feels like an obligatory "oh, right, we're a SCREAM movie" awareness, we get the seen-it-all horror nerds who run a cinema club and give us the "new rules" speech. At this point, we're back to the let's-haul-Jamie-back-from-the-dead-via-the-miracle-of-VHS scene in SCREAM 3, where the franchise just basically admits it's out of ideas and hopes you get distracted by the combined awesomeness of Parker Posey and Princess Leia.
This is a film that laughs at the idea of "a Facebook killer", but expects you to think the idea of a kid live-webcasting his life can be used to dramatic effect. It's a film that wants to be innovative and full of fresh faces, but also wants to bring Neve, Courteney, and David back, because, shucks, wouldn't it be nice to bring them all back? And it's a film that refuses to kill a single one of those people, the only way it could have had the impact it so desperately wants to have.
There are still some worthwhile moments towards the end of the film, where Williamson and Craven take some valid shots at online and celebrity culture, but the story just kind of floats around and gets trapped in the "cool kill" mode. This is made even more disappointing given not only the promise of the film's opening, but also Williamson's story-first approach on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, one of television's finest guilty pleasures (and before anyone gets too upset about that, let's remember Williamson's THE FACULTY, which is one of the finest alien invasion/murder your teacher films ever made). But by the end of SCREAM 4, you just kind of want to watch that opening 10 minutes again.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write THE TWEET IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE, a horror film that will truly speak to my generation.
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