Meta-Horror is Sooo Last Century
This is a great movie for people who don't typically "get" clever movies, but wish that they did. The humor in Scream 4 is witty without being smart, so even folks whose skulls tend toward the thick will find it humorous. And it's a few steps up from slap-stick silly, so people who fancy themselves cerebral won't have their sensibilities offended. Probably. I mean, they bought a ticket for Scream 4, right?
It's just that this whole idea of "Guess what audience, we know that you know that you're watching a horror movie" is so 1999. What seemed so clever and meta then, seems kind of embarrassing now. In the same way that a certain well-known sitcom actress' plastic surgery is embarrassing. You want to like it, but you'd rather go watch Bruce Springsteen videos.
There are the usual fake-out startling noises and the usual gory serial killing. Stab, slice, impale, guts, yeah yeah, we get it.
The whole thing starts when Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) makes the ill-advised return to Woodsboro in order to promote a book she has written. Because what else would she do after going through all that as a teenager? Anyway, Ghostface takes advantage of her return to once again start murdering Woodsboro High students, mostly the friends of Sidney's young cousin Jill (Emma Roberts). Gale Weathers Riley (Courteney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) must learn the "new rules" of horror movies in order to come to, once again, come to the rescue.
No boobs, though. Sorry.
Here's the thing though. I've read that this Scream 4 could actually be the first in a new trilogy. Ugh, no! Unless Wes Craven has a real game changer marinating in his imagination, I think we've had all that we need of the tongue-in-cheek, kinda-scary-but-not-really slasher sub-genre. No?
