Review of Scream 3 (2000) by Moviemaniac83 — 21 Apr 2015

They say the third time's a charm. In the case of the Scream movie series, the Wes Craven/Kevin Williamson collaboration credited for having revived the slasher genre in the '90s, this cliché proves to be a falsehood. The most recent (and hopefully final) chapter in the comedy/horror trilogy comes across as a lame regurgitation of material already presented. There are no real surprises, and the whole affair has the feeling of something left too long in the pot to stew. The life and energy is gone. What began as a lively, intelligent series suffused with self-referential humor has turned into just another slice-and-dice-by-numbers affair. Scream 3 isn't just the weakest of the movies, it's the kind of thing that the original Scream lampooned with affectionate glee.

Scream 3 features three good moments, but they're hardly enough to save the movie from the tedious spiral of repetitiveness it is trapped in. The first is a from-beyond-the-grave video lecture by Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who offers up the "rules of the trilogy." For example, "events in the third segment always go back to the beginning" and "even the hero can die in the final chapter." (One that he doesn't mention, and which proves true in this case, is that the final installment of any trilogy is usually the worst. The examples Randy cites, Star Wars and The Godfather, are classic examples of this.) Then there's a brief cameo by cult heroes Jay and Silent Bob, who are given a couple of lines (well, at least Jay is. Finally, Carrie Fisher appears as a receptionist who bemoans not having gotten the part of Princess Leia in Star Wars because she wouldn't sleep with George Lucas.

When it comes to storyline, character development, and pacing, Scream 3 strikes out. The movie drags along from one predictable slaying to the next, and the only real scares along the way are the "boo!" moments when something innocuous jumps out of the shadows just before the real killer strikes. Meanwhile, the level of humor in Scream 3 is way down. Parker Posey (as the actress playing Gale in the Stab series) has a few amusing lines, but the ironic dialogue and cute references to other horror films, which were wearing thin in Scream 2, are now positively threadbare.

Once, I wrote that Scream 3 would have to do something radical or inventive to avoid becoming tiresome. Unfortunately, there's nothing here that even the most inexperienced horror film fan would call innovative, and the predictable result is a movie that pales in comparison with its predecessors. Thus far, 2000 has been a very bad year for films, and Scream 3 does nothing to reverse the trend.