Review of Scream 3 (2000) by Elliot P — 11 Jul 2014

While "Scream 2" came almost immediately after the success of "Scream", "Scream 3" arrived in the year 2000. The mind behind the last films, Kevin Williamson, is now replaced by Ehren Kruger, the mind behind Transformers 2,3 and 4. Now the question is: What Kruger did to Scream?

The film within a film "Stab 3" is coming out, Dewey and Gale are involved in the production of that fictitious film. On the set, murders happen by a new killer under the persona of Ghostface. Sydney is now under seclusion after the events of the last film and is tormented by the ghost of her dead mother, she realises that facing this new killer is the only way to find peace.

The third installment of the franchise became what the original was making fun of: A generic and mindless slasher film. The first thing that stands out is the campy setup that replaces the referential vibe. The film goes way too far into the comedy realm. It tries to hard to pull out some new tricks but instead of making the film better it actually makes it more absurd. The story here is a mess, without consistency at all and even going into absurdity and it is even called out in the film. The acting is just passable, but I don't blame the actors, the characters that they play, are so forgettable that I don't even remember their names, hell, it even struggles in stablishing who is the main character. The "whodunit" fails miserably to hook you and the pay off is just a WTF moment. It has a lot of the problems that Scream 2 had, but without the essence of the first film and lacking the enjoyable kills that the last two films had.

There are barely some enjoyable sections in this film but if you take it as an average horror/slasher sequel, it is just as good as the majority of them, which is not saying a lot actually.

Without Williamson's style, this franchise fails in everything that made the original the great film it is. This is a mediocre horror/slasher film but it is a huge dissapointment for a Scream fan like me. Scream was a film for horror movie lovers and Scream 3 is a movie for horror movie makers.