Review of Scream 3 (2000) by Conner R — 15 Jul 2011

For me, Scream 3 takes things a little too far. Sure, it's nice to see the characters back and all, but you don't have the precision and style that part two built up. That one had the ability to be still original and play with expectations.

This goes back closer to that fine line of "is this a spoof or an actual horror movie?", even though it's literally centering around a film within a film. What is missing is the writing from Kevin Williamson and the fact that these characters are too familiar and predictable now.

We all know who's going to live and die before it happens and the idea of horror satire just isn't realistic on the third outing. Wes Craven's directing only goes so far, but when you're dealing with a movie that's highly dependent on precise dialogue and film geek references it's almost impossible to come out with an exact matching in quality.

It fares best when it has the returning characters back together. What didn't help was the idea of changing all the rules; that's just a little too much. Scream 2 works so well because it threw subtlety out the window, this goes back and forth.

It sort've blends the style of the first two movies together and that's going to give mixed results. In my opinion it's just lazy and another excuse to limp off the success and fan base of the first two.