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Critics Consensus: The franchise is showing its age, but Scream 4 is undeniably an improvement over its predecessor, with just enough meta humor and clever kills.
Critic Consensus: The franchise is showing its age, but Scream 4 is undeniably an improvement over its predecessor, with just enough meta humor and clever kills.
All Critics (179) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (106) | Rotten (73) | DVD (3)
"Scream 4" lacks the qualities that would make it a masterpiece, but it testifies to the cyclical nature of commercial storytelling in sharp, nearly timeless fashion.
Scream 4 is fun, but more clever-clever than fiendishly ingenious.
Scream's brand of horror, which lampooned the slasher genre while simultaneously embracing it, was fun and breezy in 1996. In 2011, it's about as fresh as the whiff of something stale and rank from a crypt.
Craven guides us expertly down a series of blind, bloody alleys, a journey that's more pleasurable than frustrating. On account of his steady hand, the last act is as good as could be expected: skillfully conceived and entertaining in its preposterousness
Scream 4 is a total hoot. Assuming you can find the humor in knife stabbings.
Compared with so many of the rebooted slasher flicks, Scream 4 remains a cut above. No, that is not an intended pun.
Where the film works best is in its sharp, self-aware attitude toward the rules of the horror genre, and can perhaps be forgiven its occasionally unexciting dialogue and ridiculous one-liners.
It doesn't always hit the vital organs, but it comes pretty close, and sometimes that's all it takes.
The films true strength, though, lies in the young cast. Alongside [Hayden Panettiere's] Kirby are Kieran Culkin and Emma Roberts. Their performances elevate the film from simply a great movie to a rewatchable classic.
Its gimmicks haven't grown up, although its older fan base has.
A half-thought-out lark, the movie mocks and rejects every current trend of the genre.
Easily rises up its peers in the genre and is a suspenseful sequel worth screaming about.
The late addition to the 90s trilogy that successfully mocked and celebrated the slasher genre at the same time does quite a few things right. There are enough new characters around who appear suspicious, the guessing game is fun. It also adds new layers due to the changed rules of social media in 2011, although that part already feels slightly dated six years later. Other aspects of the film are oddly familiar and repetitive, adding little more to the trilogy that we haven't already seen. The film is pretty entertaining and the ending somewhat different at least.
Super Reviewer
There was a great opportunity for the meta element here, considering the changes in horror movies along the past ten years, but this useless reboot is never original and basically redoes the same slasher of fifteen years ago. Besides, the only actor who is actually good is Hayden Panettiere.
A lot has changed since the original 1996 "Scream," and this fourth installment in the franchise is apt to point every one of those changes out time and again. Original director Wes Craven and original screenwriter Kevin Williamson come back for more, and do so with the willingness of an entirely new cast and the old one, an unprecedented feat seeing as how the last film was made eleven years prior. The original film celebrated the diverse inclinations of the horror genre, while also poking fun at it thanks to veteran director Craven helming the vehicle. What was great about the original was that it knew what it was (Meta) and nearly broke the fourth wall time and again by addressing itself over and over. More than its cheekiness though was that "Scream" simply was an amazing horror movie: it utilized new technologies for ingenious kills, had two manic and yet unsuspecting killers, and had thoughtfully written and entertaining characters. This sequel does willingly give itself make to Meta, and with gusto, bringing in an entirely new cast to replace the archetypes of the original and jumpstarting the original's breadth of knowledge on horror films. The horror film obsessed generation that we're introduced to in this version though are not enjoyably familiar, only agitating and crass. The original cast, in conjunction, only mirrors some of their more prominent characteristics, including Gale's tenacity, Dewey's slovenly ineptitude, and Sidney's propensity for being a victim. The film does not reboot itself, does not do much that's new in the way of kills, and doesn't distract from two killers, only makes us wait until they're eventually unmasked. I will say that the ending, with its distractions and climactic turns, was unprecedented and did something many reboots are too cowardly to do. That's what's great about the "Scream" franchise, and after the bitter taste of the third, this is a great retelling of an age old story. Though I don't think it's an unnecessary sequel, I do agree with a quote from the last moments of the film: "You forgot the first rule of remakes. Don't fuck with the original!"
If Kevin McCallister were in Scream franchise, the Ghostface killer was already in prison.
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