The horror film is like sex, no? It’s all about how it ends.
“Scre4m” provides strong evidence that the meta thing has gone about as far as it can go: With their dying gasps, arterially vented victims make cute pop-culture references.
The “Scream 4” (I refuse to write it the other way anymore) drinking game: Take a slug every time someone on-screen remarks how meta it all is. And it’s leading to an ending that’s ridiculous and longwinded. Endings of horror films should be a single, perfect image — Tony Perkins trying to look like he wouldn’t hurt a fly, or the empty patch of lawn where Michael Myers should be. Comedies should end with a big laugh.
“Scream 4” ends . . . busily.
MORE: BEST & WORST OF THE ‘SCREAM’ TRILOGY
We begin on the anniversary of the original killings in Woodsboro, a town that treats the murder spree like a cute pop trend. Effigies of the Munch-masked hemo goblin, “Ghostface,” are hung on lampposts. Sidney Prescott (Neve Cambell) has written her own book about surviving, while journalist Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Sheriff Dewey (David Arquette), who is now her husband (so meta!) look into a new spate of killings, many of them involving taunts from a familiar voice on the phone. Kids at the high school (Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin) incessantly talk about horror-movie conventions and plan to attend a party showing a series of “Stab” movies, based on the original murders and serving also as spoofs of the franchise we’re watching.
Really: How many times can you make variations on the same joke? The meta stuff is flattering you, trying to make you think you’re smart for noticing what is obvious. When the killer asks one character some slasher-flick trivia, then backs down when she gives every possible correct answer, does that make any sense, or is it just meant to make you feel at home?
There are a few clever reversals, and the plot at least keeps you guessing. (Someone I momentarily thought was the culprit instead gets multitudinously punctured minutes later.) But we’re essentially watching two films that don’t mix all that well — the rhythm is smirk, smirk, shriek.
In one of these two parallel movies, everyone sits around talking about “genre.” (Another drinking game lies herein.) Some of the joshing is fun — there’s a smartphone program that disguises your voice to make you sound like growly Ghostface. (It’s a killer app.) Occasionally there are satiric thrusts that are about as effective as being stabbed with a ballpoint pen: Nobody reads anymore, everyone wants to be famous, people spend too much time on the Web. Parts of the script seem like junior Aaron Sorkin blasts at that awful Internet, which people so unfairly use to say mean things about Aaron Sorkin and this film’s creative team, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson.
The other interspersed movie is a routine slasheroo that really doesn’t upend the clichés we keep hearing about. Why do people get out of their cars, wander into darkened yards, seem almost willfully disinclined to glance in more than one direction? Because the script isn’t as clever as it wants to be.
Chasing the surprise ending means abandoning other important elements — a good motive is absent and there is a hugely jarring coincidence. “This is just silly,” someone says. Admitting it doesn’t make it less true. (On the other hand, having someone tell Campbell “Your ingenue days are over” is just mean. Neve, bless her, remains touching in her ineptitude. She is still convinced that the way to play extreme stress is to squint slightly, and here I give you yet another drinking game.)
Also, one quick question for this burg after it suffers more perforations than a sheet of stamps: Why doesn’t anybody just buy a gun? I guess the female characters spent all their money on tight tank tops.