Scream 4 (2011)
January 23, 2025 5:24 PM - Subscribe

[Trailer] "Ten years have passed, and Sidney Prescott, who has put herself back together thanks in part to her writing, is visited by the Ghostface Killer."

Summary from IMDb.

Directed by Wes Craven from a screenplay by Kevin Williamson. Starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Lucie Hale, Shenae Grimes-Beech, Marley Shelton, and Hayden Panettiere.

60% / 57% on Rotten Tomatoes.

JustWatch listing.
posted by johnofjack (4 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I feel like this one was a return to form after the dip in quality from the first one to 2 and 3. Kevin Williamson is back, and it's a little glib and jokey at the beginning but then it settles into being a fairly straightforward, even somewhat grungy, slasher. I don't mind it, but the vibes are a bit different from 1-3.

I guess if I had to rank the six (so far) from best to worst, it would be 1, 5, 6, 4, 2, 3. Just my opinion, obviously.

The poster stylizes the title as SCRE4M (pronounced "Screh-form"?), I guess because they wanted to emulate Sesevenen (reasonable) and Thirthirteenen Ghosts (no, that one's a hot mess).

Courteney Cox's face over the series could be read as its own story (presumably one about Hollywood misogyny). I wish American actors generally felt as comfortable as Brits at just, you know, looking whatever age they are.

At any rate, this movie. I've seen it twice; it's a solid slasher. Not as good as the first, but few slashers are.
posted by johnofjack at 5:39 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]


Interesting to hear your thoughts on the series johnofjack, I would actually put this as the bottom point of the series!

My personal order is 1, 2, 5, 6, 3, 4 (with the middle 4 having little distance between them while the top and bottom spots are absolutely locked in)

4 is the a part in the series where they are too attached to the main cast, and as a consequence, it feels a little toothless when their plot armour becomes impenetrable. So we get new people introduced and then killed off before we have too much time to grow attached. And killing off ever more distant relatives/friends of the main cast loses impact on them as well.

This was the one where I went in hoping for them to either double down on killing the main cast or really subverting expectations by having Sydney (or someone else from the core crew) finally snap and be revealed as the killer. This most closely resembles what I think the Stab movie sequels are like: unsurprising retreads of familiar ground. Not bad, just unsurprising.

For all my complaints, it's still a solid slasher film. Even at its weakest, Scream is one of the consistently strongest franchises out there. Kirby is a great and there are still plenty of great kills and sequences here.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:41 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]


This film has middle child syndrome, and that's unfortunate because as a stand alone, it's one of the better ones in the franchise.

I've seen every Scream on opening night and I remember when this one came out the vibe in the theater was it wasn't nostalgic enough nor enough of a reboot and people were grumpy about it.

On rewatch, years later, it is one of the ones that still makes me jump, and I love the cast. Rory Culkin is one of my favs and I love him in this. It was fun to see a new generation take up this series....but I agree with johnofjack that they weren't willing to let the old cast stand back. It's almost like they shot the entire thing with the new cast and then shoehorned the old cast in at the last second.

But I agree that after 3 it was a return to the slasher side over the comedy and it set the table for Scream 5 to come in and be incredible.
posted by haplesschild at 8:19 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]


It was fun to see a new generation take up this series....but I agree with johnofjack that they weren't willing to let the old cast stand back.

I can't take credit for that; that was slimepuppy's observation. That said, I don't disagree with it; I read it and stopped and said "Huh" then "Yeah, it does feel like that, doesn't it?" I feel like they corrected course a bit with the next ones, but this probably isn't the place to discuss that since it could be considered spoilers.
posted by johnofjack at 7:20 AM on January 25


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