‘SCREAM 4’Rated: R. Contains obscenity, violence, gore and underage drinking.Running time: 112 minutes.
“Scream 4” has issues.
If it were a person, and not a movie, it would be a 17-year-old bulimic girl, desperate for the attention of 17-year-old boys and alternately bingeing on cheesy slasher-flick cliches, and purging, by pointing out, over and over, just how gag-me-with-a spoon cheesy they are.
On the one hand, it is obsessed with itself, winking and pouting in front of the metaphorical mirror of self-referential scrutiny that the series – directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson – is famous for. On the other, it suffers from a case of crushingly low self-esteem, reminding us at every turn just how lame it is. (In a sense, it won’t shut up about how fat it looks in these jeans.) The put-downs, of course, are meant to get a laugh. The problem is, the movie doesn’t really care if we are laughing with it or at it.
Set 10 years after “Scream 3,” the movie centers on the return of Sidney Preston (Neve Campbell) to her hometown of Woodsboro, notable for being the site of a series of grisly murders by a psychopath, dubbed Ghostface, in a black robe and Halloween mask. (Unlike, say, the “Nightmare on Elm Street,” ”Halloween” and “Friday the 13th” movies, a new killer is revealed under the mask in each installment.) Film after film, although it’s always Sidney who is the source of Ghostface’s homicidal rage, most of the victims are collateral damage: lusty teenagers, lazy cops and others who happen to get in the way.