SCREAM 4
The first Scream is a classic. The best. One of my all-time favourites. It’s a film that brings with it three distinct memories for me. The first memory is of a story on A Current Affair about a girl who had seen Scream at a sleepover and then had not been able to sleep ever again. “Is this movie too scary for our kids?!” the story asked. And then, of course, they went to an ad break and we saw that Scream was going to be making its television debut that Sunday night. And in my mind, I thought, “holy shit, they’re showing it?! But it scared a person!”
I was thirteen when the first Scream came out, and even though I had not seen it the second memory I have is of kids at school asking each other the questions Ghost Face asks Drew Barrymore in the opening sequence. Yelling across the back row of Maths: “who’s the killer in Friday the 13th?” like they were all tiny psycho quiz-masters. “Ahh wrong! It’s the mum, you dumbass!”
Before I tell you the third memory, a thing you need to know about me is that I was not allowed to watch MA rated movies until I turned fifteen. I would recommend implementing this rule with your own kids; it’s a great way to raise a person who is terrified of everything.
As I said I was thirteen when Scream arrived, so I did not see it. But because I was a goddamn little dweebling who so desperately wanted to understand this Scream movie that everybody was talking about, I found a bookstore where they had the screenplay for the movie and I read Scream. I read it. I did the same thing with Pulp Fiction; long before I ever saw either film. Let me tell you this, that is no way for a child to live.
This movie isn’t Scream though. This is Scream 4.
Scream is the best.
Scream 2 is actually, pretty damn good. Except that ending. Woof.
Scream 3, look, okay, leave it alone, it’s not really Scream 3’s fault. Scream 3 exists at a weird moment in time. Hard to find a weirder moment in time to be a movie about young people being murdered than the year 2000. It was the year after Columbine happened and the studios got scared that movies were too violent and were a bad influence on the youth of the nation, so they made some changes. They changed the plot so there would be no more murders taking place in any high schools and they toned down the violence and put it all off-screen.
Then of course, the very next year 9/11 happens and then the Iraq War kicks off and everybody is like “you know what, fuck it” and blood is back on the menu in a big way. Four years after Scream 3 we get Saw, five years after Scream 3 we get Hostel and Wolf Creek, seven years after Scream 3 we get The Hills Have Eyes remake, and eleven years after Scream 3 we get Scream 4.
So, Scream 4. It’s pretty good. After a decade of everybody in every movie having a horrible time of trying to keep their limbs, Scream 4 is certainly the bloodiest of the franchise. As Screams go, it’s right up there with Scream 2 for my money. And my money is worth nothing.
But of course, the age-old question: where would I fit into all of this? After being terrorized on and off for over a decade by various Ghost Faced killers Sidney Prescott (Never Campbell) has returned to her home town of Woodsboro as a part of her book tour for her new autobiography ‘Out of Darkness: A True Story of Survival’. She pops into the local bookstore to give a talk and sign copies of the book and that’s where I come in. It makes perfect sense to add a new scene where Sidney’s agent Rebecca (played by Alison Brie in the film) has had the not-quite-right idea that it’d be fun to have a bit of stand-up comedy to help liven things up before Sidney starts talking about her super serious book. And just who has she found willing to do five minutes at a daytime gig, well, you’ll have to wait and see…
IF I WERE IN 'SCREAM 4' I WOULD: DIE
