“Scream 4” Movie Trailer Review

“Scream 4”

Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Joe Oliveto

The story seemed to have been wrapped up in the last installment, but no good (i.e. profitable) movie franchise can ever die, can it? Thus, this April, we’ll be seeing the fourth “Scream” film, and while we’re hoping that Wes Craven can pull off another clever pastiche of horror movie clichés, if this latest trailer is any indication, this will be the kind of film where audiences genuinely don’t know whether to laugh or scream.

That’s not a good thing.

What made the original “Scream” so effective was that it performed a remarkable balancing act. On the one-hand, it was a post-modern take on the slasher genre full of fanboy insights and small but effective jokes (casting Henry Winkler as an uptight school principal was genius). On the other hand, it still managed to be frightening on a visceral level, and its horror was made all the more potent by the way it seemed to unintentionally tap into the overall cultural zeitgeist. The villains in “Scream” weren’t invincible monsters or reanimated corpses, they were two very disturbed young men targeting their own classmates. Viewed from a post-Columbine perspective, the movie might as well be mainstream cinema’s belated incarnation of grunge, summing up the brewing violence and anger in America’s youth.

The first sequel was self-deprecating enough to stand aside its predecessor; the third film went way too far with the humor—Jay and Silent Bob show up in the movie. Not Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith in unrelated cameos. No, Jay and Silent Bob actually show up in “Scream 3.” Right.

And now, the fourth installment doesn’t look to be too much of an improvement, mainly because it seems that the filmmakers are too focused on what made the first film novel and interesting. It sounds like every other line in the script will involve some budding film student discussing the “new rules” of horror films, taking into account modern technology and communication.

It seems like those kinds of satirical statements only work when you aren’t trying too hard. It feels like that angle is played out by now.

It is nice to see all the old players back—those that survived, at least. But it’s a fair guess that they might be thrown into the background while the new generation of stars who are too attractive to be taken seriously as average high school students takes center stage.

We’ll have to see how this all pans out, and it is nice to at least see that those involved are trying to live up to the first film. They just might be putting in too much effort, and stifling the natural process of filmmaking.

View the trailer below. Thoughts?