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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Scream 4 (Film)

by Erin Free | April 12, 2011 12:46 | Edited April 12, 2011 12:47

Viciously entertaining and savagely critical of today’s shallow pop culture climate, this marks another bold, bloody and impressive entry for the franchise.

A cursory glance at Scream 4 will probably lead to the obvious question: Do we really need another Scream movie? Director Wes Craven hasn't delivered a hit - financially or artistically - since, well, 2000's Scream 3; once-hot screenwriter Kevin Williamson has been languishing in TV; and the careers of stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette have hardly reached Oscar winning or blockbusting heights. In short, you could be forgiven for thinking that Scream 4 is just another case of cinematic grave-robbing, with a bunch of desperadoes trying to breathe new life into a corpse that should just be left alone in order to resuscitate their own flagging careers.

 

Well, Scream 4 is irrefutable proof that first impressions can, indeed, be extremely misleading. The fourth installment in horror's most self-reflexive franchise is no mere money grab: this viciously entertaining and savagely intelligent film's reasons for being are manifest, and it states them in no uncertain terms. To use one of the tropes of the genre, Scream 4 is the metaphorical killer returning home to set things bloodily right...

 

Beginning with a wonderfully constructed spiral of in-jokes - at the expense of both the Scream films themselves, and the horror genre in general - Scream 4 eventually settles in as perennial victim Sidney Prescott (the engaging Neve Campbell, who hasn't appeared to have aged since the first film) returns to her hometown of Woodsboro to promote her new autobiography, which details her near constant punishment at the hands of the various incarnations of "The Ghostface Killer." Pretty much as soon as Sidney sets foot in town, the body count starts to mount, much to the consternation of Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette, goofily charming as ever) and the excitement of his now-unhappily-retired wife, Gale Weathers (a scene stealing Courteney Cox), who sees this as her opportunity to break back into the world of high powered journalism. This time, however, the killer isn't just after Sidney, also training his sick sights on her teenage cousin, Jill (Emma Roberts), and her horror-loving high school classmates.

 

By far the most "post-modernist" of the Scream movies - the film's teenage characters run around saying things like "It's so meta" (to which the delightfully dim Sheriff Dewey responds, "It's so what-a?") - the fourth installment also once again piles on the blood (the film's many, many stabbings show that a fairly simple kill scene can be just as confronting as the imaginative slayings served up in, say, Saw or Final Destination), but tempers it with an acidic, misanthropic intelligence that is a demented joy to behold.

 

Employing a brutality not seen since his transgressive 1972 cult classic The Last House On The Left, Wes Craven rails against not just what has happened to the horror genre (delivering violent gut-punches to everything from remakes and reboots to the ascension of torture porn), but also to the world at large. The film's references to Facebook, Twitter, the internet, mobile phones, and our increasingly sick obsession with fame (and the current ease with which it can be achieved, requiring neither talent nor ability) are not simply contemporised window dressing to bring the Scream franchise "up to date." They are absolutely essential to the film's loudly hailed protest about the increasing shallowness of today's pop cultural climate.

 

The best horror films have always reflected the times in which they were made. The provocative, energising Scream 4 (could this be the best fourth installment of a horror franchise ever?), however, goes one better: it doesn't just mirror the times, it boldly refutes them, throwing down a big, bad middle finger salute to a world gone seemingly crazy.