Review of Scream 4 (2011) by Radiobenji — 04 Nov 2011

I wanted to like Scream 4 more than I ultimately did, however, a few issues with the outlandish nature of some scenes, such as Alison Brie's parking garage bit and several other moments had me rolling my eyes a few too many times.

It was really great having the main characters back and to delve back into the world of Sidney Prescott who is as stubborn as a mule, why won't she just die?! Nah, I jest, the tongue in cheek nature of these films alone is alone to set them above, say, Friday the 13th sequels which ultimately serve no purpose other than to kill off big titted women.

Scream 4 has always featured familiar names getting killed off in simpler ways than, say, Freddy Kruger. The real-world, grounded nature of the human serial killer is a scarier notion than any ghost story so when these films go OTT like in Scream 3 and now 4, it ruins the film series.

The original Scream still remains one of the scariest films because of the "this could actually happen" feeling which comes with a non-supernatural villain. Not that the villain in Scream 4 has any powers (Scream 3 certainly seemed to have whacky **** going on, dunno what but it's methods didn't make sense like in 2 or 1).

Scream 4 was an attempt to fill the void left by Scream 3, bring the saga back into line whilst going off into a new, modern day horror comment. Unfortunately the lingering nature of Scream 3 stuck around therefore loses it a few points.

As I said before, some familiar names here to get hacked off, and in true Scream tradition they're all from popular TV shows, which only makes the hacking more fun. Unfortunately the end twist was a little too predictable, however the very end, the last few lines were a clever nod to how we as society praise the good and the bad, even if we don't have all the facts.

7/10, I was hoping for a 9 at least.