Film: Scream 4

Director: Wes Craven
Genre: Horror/ Comedy 
Source: USA (2011)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Streaming
Grade: D+

It's amazing what 15 years can do. I really enjoyed the first Scream movie, which came out when I was in high school. Even though I wasn't a big horror movie fan, it captured something about movie fandom that worked for me--in addition to being clever and surprisingly creepy. Since then, each successive sequel has had diminishing returns, including this one, which tries to capture the magic of the original ("New Decade, New Faces, New Rules" is the tagline) and instead ends up just feeling like a retread. In a world where horror comedy has been done better (a clip from Shaun of the Dead is actually shown in the film), where the genre has been picked apart more adroitly (Cabin in the Woods, thank you), and where slasher movies have kind of gone out of style, this movie feels like an empty retread with very little left to say. It tries to be self-referential and clever, but it comes across as if it doesn't realize how out-of-date it is. It's trying so hard to be fresh that it can't hide how stale it really is. It thinks we somehow still care about these characters. 

We don't.

That said, there is one moment that I really enjoyed where the killer is revealed and goes about trying to mangle him/herself to look like one of the victim. Surprisingly brutal, oddly comedic, and desperately pathetic--it's the tone the whole movie was going for, but never actually got. But for those three minutes it worked really well.

Let's just hope they let the original die a peaceful death now, rather than trying to resurrect it for the millionth time. Then again, maybe there's something meta about that? I don't even have the energy to care anymore.

Alternate Film Title: "Hayden Panettiere Is Actually Kind of Good In This. Who Knew?"