No Exits: Why Scream 4 Is A Good Fit For A Leaner, Meaner America

 

Please note that this article contains major spoilers for Scream 4.

The synopsis widely tossed around for the latest Scream film, which arrives 11 years after the main trilogy’s story was definitively tied off in 2000’s Scream 3, seemed reasonable enough: the three aging main cast members would be reunited once more in a film sure to at least partially wrap up their involvement in the series while making room for a new, younger main cast that could herd the still-mooing cash cow forward. That this synopsis, as business-friendly and synergistic as it sounds, turns out to be unreliable is perhaps the most interesting element of the moderately-intriguing Scream 4, which is as generationally skewed a horror sequel as you’re likely to see and one that ultimately succeeds in saying something halfway-coherent about the current national zeitgeist, albeit inelegantly and sourly. It’s also a film that ultimately does what you’d like a Scream film to do: tweak and subvert expectations, but in a punk rock way that seems calculated to irk the film’s producers and financiers rather than create a traditionally satisfying experience for moviegoers.

That the horror genre has spent the intervening decade between Scream films dining on its own innards is something Scream 4 cops to right off the bat with a boilerplate quip about horror films being effectively un-greenlightable these days unless they are remakes of a known title. All credit to Kevin Williamson for more or less internalizing his own idea -- that there is nothing new to be said about the genre – and not proceeding to then beat us over the head regardless with 90 minutes of strained, name-drop zingers. Instead, Scream 4 stops only here and there for nods at obvious targets, like the Saw franchise, and otherwise restricts itself to telling a straightforward story that’s altogether noticeably less perforated with big laughs than the previous films. There’s an unpolished, humorless sheen to this entry that seems intended to reflect the coarsened culture of an America eleven years removed from the peaceful-and-prosperous 90s and stagnating on a number of fronts.