Scream 3

Year:  2000

Director:  Wes Craven

Screenplay:  Ehren Krueger, based on characters created by Kevin Williamson

Starring:  Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox Arquette, Patrick Dempsey, Jenny McCarthy, Parker Posey, Deon Richmond, Emily Mortimer, Scott Foley, Lance Henriksen

Running Time:  117 minutes

Genre:  Comedy, horror

Sidney Prescott (Campbell) is now living in self-imposed seclusion after surviving the killing sprees in her home town of Woodsboro and Windsor College.  Until, that is a new killer, once again wearing a Ghostface mask, starts picking off the cast of new horror movie Stab 3, based on Sidney's story.  Sidney has to travel to Hollywood and reunite with fellow survivors tabloid TV news journalist Gale Weathers (Cox Arquette) and former small town cop turned security guard Dewey Riley (Arquette) to uncover the new killer.

The original Scream (1996) was a true game changer in the horror field, which really revitalised the slasher film genre, at a time when it seemed to have had it's day.  Scream 2 (1997), while not as good as the original, was still a strong sequel.  However, Scream 3 was the point where the franchise dipped.  Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two films, bowed out of screenwriting duties to be replaced by Ehren Kruger, and Williamson's distinctive voice is certainly missed here.  Wes Craven returns as the film's director and once again stages some impressive action scenes, most notably a scene where Sidney is chased by the killer through a studio mockup of Woodsboro.  Due to concerns over the portrayal of violence in media following the 1999 Columbine Massacre, the level of violence is heavily toned down from the previous films, and the film leans more towards comedy than horror.  Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courteney Cox Arquette are as engaging as ever, even if Courteney Cox Arquette (who was married to co-star David Arquette at the time) is saddled with a a truly dreadful hairstyle.  Also in the cast is genre veteran Lance Henriksen, popular model-turned-actress Jenny McCarthy, indie film veteran Parker Posey and an early role for Emily Mortimer.  The film also features cameos from legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman, Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as Jay and Silent Bob, and in the film's funniest moments Carrie Fisher as a washed-up actress working in the studio archives, still bitter over the fact that the role of Princess Leia went to "the one that slept with George Lucas".  Another fun element is Parker Posey as the actress playing Gale Weathers teaming up with Courteney Cox Arquette as the real Gale Weathers, in order to get into character.  The film is not as funny or suspenseful as the previous films, but the Hollywood setting adds an interesting element, and the final act of the film does work, even if it feels more like a cross between Agatha Christie and film noir than a Scream film.  There is also a character who is a creepy movie producer who preys on young actresses and delivers the line "there are plenty of criminals in this town whose careers are flourishing", which has an added resonance in the post-Weinstein world.  Ironically, Harvey Weinstein was one of the film's executive producers.

David Arquette, Neve Campbell and Patrick Dempsey in Scream 3

  

Scream 2

Year:  1997

Director:  Wes Craven

Screenplay:  Kevin Williamson

Starring:  Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, Jerry O'Connell, Timothy Olyphant, Laurie Metcalfe, Jada Pinkett, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Liev Schreiber

Running Time:  120 minutes

Genre:  horror, comedy

 Two Windsor College students are brutally murdered at a preview of the new horror film Stab, based on the serial murders in the small town of Woodsboro.  Sidney Prescott (Campbell), one of the survivors of the Woodsboro murders, is also a student at Windsor and soon realises that she is once more being targeted by a ghost-mask wearing killer.  As the bodies and suspects mount up, it becomes clear that someone is trying to make a sequel to the previous killing spree.

Given the immense success of Scream (1996) a sequel was almost inevitable, and the filmmakers certainly didn't waste any time, with Scream 2 in cinemas only a year after the original.  Given the short time between the films it is surprising that Scream 2 is as good as it is.  While the original film both celebrated and commented on the tropes of traditional slasher horror films, this film does the same with horror sequels, including a scene which mirrors a famous sequence in the original where the film nerd Randy (played by Jamie Kennedy) outlines the rules of sequels.  Horror veteran Wes Craven returns to directing duties and orchestrates everything on a much bigger scale with some memorable set pieces, the opening sequence in the cinema, featuring Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett, is one of the highlights of the whole Scream series, and the ensemble cast, which features a number of future stars, as well as veterans such as David Warner, all give good performances.  Neve Campbell is good in the lead, and there is real connection between Courteney Cox and David Arquette, who were in a relationship at the time and later got married. The script by Kevin Williamson is witty, clever and full of pop-culture references.  This film also introduced film-within-a-film Stab, which would become a recurring feature in the Scream franchise, allowing the filmmakers to comment on and poke fun at the franchise itself.  the film inevitably lacks the freshness of the original.  There also some glaring plot holes, and a reliance on red-herring scares.  It is still a very good film, and definitely a superior sequel.

Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox in Scream 2

Scream

Year of Release:  1996
Director:  Wes Craven
Screenplay:  Kevin Williamson
Starring:  Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Courteney Cox, Rose McGowan, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy
Running Time:  111 minutes
Genre:  Horror, thriller, comedy

In the small American town of Woodsboro, teenager Casey Becker (Barrymore) is tormented by taunting phone calls from a mysterious masked killer, who brutally murders her when she fails his twisted movie trivia game.  As Woodsboro becomes a media circus, it becomes apparent that the killer is particularly focussing on Sidney Prescott (Campbell), whose mother was killed almost exactly a year before.

Some films seem to perfectly capture a particular time period, and Scream, to me, is one of the definitive films of the late 1990s.  The look, style and music really capture that period.  Horror was pretty much in the doldrums at the time, and slasher films in particular were as dead as if the genre had gone out at night to investigate a strange noise, until Scream brought it back.  The film's great idea is that, unlike most of the slashers that had gone before, the characters here are aware of slasher films, and are fully aware of the conventions of the genre.  Audiences sometimes watch horror films and scream in laughter at the stupidity of the characters, this film second guesses that audience by having the characters on screen do it for them (literally in one scene where a character is watching Halloween (1978) oblivious to the killer looming up behind him, and equally unaware that he is being recorded and watched in a TV news van, where the people watching are shouting the same things that he is saying to Jamie Lee Curtis).  The characters are frequently discussing horror films and enumerate in detail the rules of a slasher film.  However Scream is not just a spoof of horror, it works as a slasher film in it's own right, screenwriter Kevin Williamson  obviously loves and knows horror, and director Wes Craven was one of the great horror directors, cutting his teeth on the controversial The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) before unleashing Freddy Krueger onto the world in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).  In fact Craven had explored similar post-modern territory before with Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), which I still think is the best of the Elm Street series.
The film's most recognisable star, Drew Barrymore, is killed within the first quarter of an hour, in a scene that quickly became iconic.  Star Neve Campbell was known for the TV show Party of Five (1994-2000) and Courteney Cox, who starred as tabloid TV news journalist Gale Weathers, made her name in the hugely popular Friends (1994-2004).  The characters are well-drawn and, crucially, Williamson and Craven seem to genuinely like them, so it is affecting when they are in danger, they are not just there to be sliced 'n' diced.  The fact that the film is not just a gory slasher, but it has humour, teen drama and mystery, meant that it's appeal moved beyond the horror fans.
To date, the film has spawned three sequels, and a TV series.    

Courntey Cox, Jamie Kennedy and Neve Campbell in Scream

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Year of Release:  1984
Director:  Wes Craven
Screenplay:  Wes Craven
Starring:  Heather Langenkemp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund
Running Time:  90 minutes
Genre:  Horror

 A group of teenage friends in a small American town find themselves pursued in their dreams by a horrifically burned figure armed with a glove which has razor-sharp blades attached to the fingers.  If they are killed in their dreams, they die in reality too.  As the friends are killed off one by one, the survivors have to stay awake long enough to figure out a way to fight their dreams.

This film is one of the most influential horror films of the 1980s and possibly one of the most influential horror movies of all time, introducing the iconic movie villain Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund), and spawning six direct sequels, a TV series (Freddy's Nightmares (1988-1990)), a crossover with the Friday the 13th franchise (Freddy vs. Jason (2003)) and a remake in 2010.  By and large the film sticks to the well-established slasher movie formula, but given a supernatural twist.  The death scenes are, by and large, imaginative and well-staged.  Another reason why the film works so well is the simple fact that everyone sleeps and dreams, and our dreams are always beyond our control, and it plays with the idea that is we are harmed in a dream we could be harmed in real-life as well (the idea that dying in a dream equals dying in real life is a very old one, and it used to be believed that this is why we wake up at the very last minute, a kind of psychological escape hatch so we don't snuff it in our sleep because we happened to have a midnight snack).  Writer-director Wes Craven was inspired by a series of disturbing real-lifer incidents from the 1970s where refugees from Southeast Asia refused to sleep after suffering terrifying nightmares, some of them subsequently died in their sleep.

The film creates a believably cluttered suburban setting, and is elevated by Craven's obvious affection for his teenage characters, who are played by a talented cast headed by Heather Langenkemp who gives a great performance mixing vulnerability and strength as the strong-minded Nancy, and a very young Johnny Depp as her boyfriend Glen.  Of course, the standout performance is Freddy Krueger who, coupled with his memorable appearance, gives Freddy a gleefully cruel wit, before the character became a pop culture joke.

This is one of the purely fun horror movies.  Full of shocks and scares and a few jokes, and nasty enough to raise a gasp, but not nasty enough to be too disturbing for non-horror fans.

Heather Langenkemp and Robert Englund in A Nightmare on Elm Street           

Scream 4

Year: 2011
Director: Wes Craven
Screenplay: Kevin Williamson
Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Anthony Anderson, Alison Brie, Adam Brody, Rory Culkin
Running Time: 111 minutes
Genre: Horror, slasher

Summary: It's been ten years since the notorious "Woodsboro Massacre", and Stab, the film based on the murders, has spawned six successful sequels. The small town of Woodsboro has put the murders behind it, to the point where the massacre have become something of a joke to the town's high school students until, on the tenth anniversry of the killings, two high school students (Aimee Teegarden and Brittany Robertson) are brutally stabbed to death by a killer wearing the same "Ghostface" costume and mask that the original "Woodsboro Massacre" killer wore.
The following day Sidney Prescott (Campbell), who has survived three previous massacres perpetrated by "Ghostface" killers, returns to Woodsboro to promote her book Out of the Darkness but almost immediately becomes caught up in the murders. Especially since her teenage cousin, Jill Roberts (Roberts), and her friends Kirby (Panettiere), Charlie (Culkin) and Olivia (Marielle Jaffe) are among those targeted by taunting telephone calls from the killer.
As Sheriff Dewey Riley (Arquette) leads the investigation, his wife one-time journalist Gale Weathers (Cox) (on whose books the Stab movies were based) determines to solve the killings, and it soon becomes apparent that this horror movie obsessed killer is planning a "remake" of the original massacre: with everything bigger and better than before.

Opinions: The original Scream (1996) was a massive hit with it's blend of scares, mystery, humour and movie references. It assumed that audiences were familiar with horror movies and so it had it's characters being equally familiar with the genre. The sequel, Scream 2 (1997), targeted it's jokes and references at horror movie sequels, while Scream 3 (2000), which was intended to be the final film in the series, referenced trilogies. This film, coming out eleven years after the previous one, deals with endless, and increaingly bad, sequels and the recent popular trend to remake older horror movies.
It opens with kind of a clever sequence in which two teenagers are savagely murdered in what appears to be an over the top self-parody, but is revealed to be the opening sequence to Stab 7 (the latest in the film-within-a-film series based on the events of the first Scream). It pretty much sets the tone for what follows.
Scream 4 (or if you prefer it's on-screen title SCRE4M) is not a bad movie at all. It's funny, it's clever, it has suspense and a few good shocks and pretty much delivers what anyone could expect from a Scream movie. The cast perform well, and Wes Craven directs with his usual sure hand. It benefits enormously from Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two Scream films, returning for this.
The problem is that Scream was such an influential film in it's time. For about six years afterwards horror was full of jokey self-referential slasher films, none of which managed to get as good a balance between jokes and scares as Scream. Watching Scream 4 it's hard not too feel as if it's been done before, although that tends to always be the way with sequels. At least this makes an effort to stay fresh.
Scream 4 is an entertaining and enjoyable movie, which fans will certainly enjoy, and is in fact an improvement on it's predecessor.



Neve Campbell in Scream 4