Do You Need To Watch The Last 101 Minutes of Scream 4?

The short answer is, no, not really.


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.

THE RULES OF ATTRACTION - get ready for the tangential Tony Scott reference!

Friends, the rumours are true: yes, I own DAWSON'S CREEK: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION. This may not be a shocking revelation, coming so soon after my stunning admission that I've read (and, at times, enjoyed) all the Twilight books, and own (and have not returned) a 50 Cent CD, but it can't be my fault that Kevin Williamson's seminal coming-of-age teen series is an eerie and horrible mirror to my life. It can't be. I had never seen an episode of Dawson's Creek before last year. I never chose to wear the same sweaters as Dawson. I never made my mom buy decorative banners to hang outside our house so that our house would look like Dawson's. And I didn't go to film school only to become disillusioned with filmmaking because that's what Dawson did. It just kinda happened that way. So yes, I watch Dawson's Creek. I watch it in the vague belief that James Vanderbeek is some sort of Kyle Reese-version of me, a warrior of sorts, sent back to our time from the future to warn me away from making horrible life choices.

Which is why watching RULES OF ATTRACTION post-Dawson's Creek was really, really weird for me. I've grown pretty accustomed to seeing James Vanderbeek as an avatar of myself over five seasons or so, so to see him as an "emotional vampire", as he describes himself in the film, was fairly disturbing. It's like watching Kyle Reese rip off his face to expose a glowing red eye and glinty exoskeleton underneath (Editor's Note: this review continues after a two-hour break in which Brandon wrote a totally wicked fanfic where John Connor was forced to kill a terminator with his father's face - which temporarily helped blot out the fact that The Sarah Connor Chronicles ever existed in his mind - Smitty.)

Where was I? RULES OF ATTRACTION, right. It's a dark satire of the college experience, based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel, and adapted and directed by Roger Avary, the man who gave us at least some of TRUE ROMANCE (Tony Scott-approved!), the Bruce Willis section of PULP FICTION, and the script for Zemeckis' BEOWULF (co-written with Neil Gaiman). The man is a talented writer, and what is most admirable about his scripting for this film is while it is unrepentantly bleak, there's an incredible amount of humour going on at the same time. It's wickedly funny, the kind of laughter where you're thinking to yourself, "I shouldn't be laughing at this. I mean, that's Jay Baruchel OD'ing over there - I should feel sad that the kid from PMK is dying."

But you don't. It's impressive that you never really empathize for the characters of THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, but you're still fascinated and amused by them. They're all cold, unfeeling imitations of humanity - Terminators, almost - who treat each other terribly. Essentially it's a film about how awful people can be, but it never becomes so repugnant that you want to turn it off - it's something of a miracle. Vanderbeek is a bit of a heartless bastard, Shannon Sossamon is self-absorbed and deluded, Ian Somerhalder is a pathetic obsessive, and Jessica Biel is playing a straight-up bitch - but they're all kind of funny.

If I have a complaint with THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, it would be that the film is occasionally over-stylized. I can live with the backwards footage that opens the film, and the incredibly fast-paced 'Victor' sequence, as I think they accurately depict a mood that Avary is going for, but things like the split-screen sequence or the heavy-handed scene with Swoosie Kurtz and Faye Dunaway feel like he doesn't trust his actors to convey the emotion or point of the scene (and this from the guy that liked CONVERSATION(S) WITH OTHER WOMEN!) You want the film to calm down at points and just tell a straightforward story without trying to blow your eyeballs off.

Certainly not for everyone, if THE RULES OF ATTRACTION is like Kyle Reese turning into a Terminator, then it comes with the realization that you're a Terminator, too, and now you can play awesome robot games together! Yippee! I love you robot dad!