Scre4m - Horror Film Review

First of all I think that calling Scream 4 'Scre4m' was a terrible terrible idea.  I confess that I was kinda excited about seeing this film but was it any good?

Scre4m sees the old cast of the Scream films reunited as Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to her hometown of Woodsboro on the anniversary of the original Woodsboro murders as part of her book tour.  Her arrival starts another slew of killings by a new Ghostface who seems to want her and her cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) dead for reasons unknown.

The films lack of plot is quite grating, there really is none to speak of with characters killed left, right and centre without any time to get to know or care about them.  The film has a high body count, and the blood and violence at least looks good with nice blood splatters (a high note early in the film is a corpse with its intestines hanging out).  I was worried that the invincibility of the core characters would ruin the film but this is only one of the reasons that the film fails on so many levels.

Ghostface used to be a scary character but no longer, it has been used so often that it is almost a parody of itself, the running theme that the new killer is attempting a remake of the original events (Scream) doesn't help this sense of immense deja vu.  There is nothing novel here at all, it has all been done before.  An early scene where a character attempts to crawl under her electronic garage door whilst pursued by the killer I felt for sure was going to turn out to be a fake chase, but no it is instead a near recreation of a similar event in Scream.  Ghostface appears to be about 7 feet tall so I was kinda confused when the killer (or killers! Woo spooky) turns out not to be tall at all.  The plot makes little sense with strange motivations and camera work designed to try and single out innocent characters as totally evil in order to trick the audience.

The returning cast of Campbell, Arquette and Cox do their best but I just do not care at all about their characters any more.  I don't care for invincible dullards.  The new characters are the usual assortment of pretty teens, all pretty much interchangeable.  Special note goes to Mary McDonnell who was amazing as Laura Roslin in Battlestar Galactica but here is easily the worst actor in the whole film.

I wanted this film to be good, even after the awful trailers I still had hopes but alas this film is not good.  Leaving the cinema I heard a girl behind me telling her boyfriend that she thought the film was pretty good.  With opinions like that I wait in dread for Scre5m or whatever the hell they will call the inevitable sequel.

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