Scream 4

Long let the knives rest, but now the masked Woodsboro killer is at it again! Eleven years after Scream 3, director Wes Craven has once again gathered the main cast of the original trilogy - Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette - to inject some fresh air into the horror genre currently dominated by remakes, sequels and reboots. Whether he can pull off what he did with the first installment in 1996 fifteen years later, however, is questionable.

Ten years have passed since the masked Woodsboro Killer last first called his victims, asked for their favorite horror movie, and then stabbed them to death. In the successful Stab franchise, the experiences of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends have been rehashed over and over again and have long since become a staple of fan culture. When Sidney returns to her old home to promote her best-selling book based on the bloody events of yesteryear, it also seems like a good opportunity for a new Ghostface killer to sharpen his knives again. For Sidney, Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette) and his bored wife, the former sensational reporter Gale (CourteneyCox), it is clear: No one in Woodsboro is safe from the butcher. Because as not only the means of communication but also the horror genre have changed, the killer doesn't play by the old rules either. And soon the small town's morgue is filling up by the hour.

Scream 4 begins right away with a very pretty idea that makes it clear that Wes Craven is not sparing with tongue-in-cheek criticism of the genre in his latest work. Craven, whose last film My Soul to take could hardly convince, again plays skillfully with clichés and rules of the genre and has gathered for this again a lot of attractive young stars in front of his camera. Whether Heroes star Hayden Panattiere, Emma Roberts (Valentine's Day), Rory Culkin (Signs), Anna Paquin (True Blood), Kirsten Bell (Veronica Mars), Alison Brie (Mad Men) or Adam Brody (O.C., California), Craven has provided his veterans of the first films with a respectable ensemble cast, most of whom are only seen on screen for fairly short periods of time, but at least they ensure that the film is pretty to look at.

Although the tension of the first film is never matched at any moment, some of the scenes in which Ghostface strikes are quite effectively executed. But unfortunately, this also reveals a major problem. Due to the enormous popularity of the series, Scream has become the target of more or less successful persiflage over the past decade. The Scary Movie films in particular have taken the Scream franchise, which is also not really meant to be taken seriously, and made a big mockery of it. And since these parodies were also sometimes very successful, the impressions have become a bit mixed. On the one hand, the viewer expects Ghostface to have plenty of murders that are as original as possible. On the other hand, it wouldn't really be surprising if the whole thing suddenly degenerated into total slapstick. Due to the fact that Scream has become such a cult phenomenon, which this fourth film does a good job of teasing, the films have been robbed of some of their impact. So Scream 4 simply lacks any really good shock moments and even if Wes Craven obviously tried hard, he has a hard time keeping up the suspense until the more or less surprising ending.

In addition, Craven repeatedly runs the risk of stepping into the very traps he is actually criticizing. Scream 4 is not only a sequel, but in some ways a remake and a reboot of the series. And that's exactly why this film also almost inevitably makes some of the mistakes that Protagonists so pointedly criticizes. It may be that this was Craven's intention and is just another tongue-in-cheek play on familiar clichés. But this impression does not really remain in the end.

Nonetheless, Scream 4 is a very entertaining horror film that has a lot of entertainment value, especially for fans of the first three parts, and is far superior to the rather weak third part in particular. And even if the whole thing is not as clever as Craven would probably like it to be, and even if there are some weaknesses in terms of content and acting, in the end the moments that make this return to Woodsboro an enjoyable cinematic experience of the bloodier kind prevail. Therefore: absolutely recommendable for fans!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp