Movie Review: Scream 4

Before the review starts, I want to quickly say that my interest in the Scream franchise isn't just some bullshit, kitschy interest. I genuinely enjoy these movies as a sort of classic "whodunnit" story. I've been a fan of these movies since I was 10, and while I'll readily admit that maybe part of my enjoyment is based on nostalgia, I also really believe that these movies have a lot of potential. Also, what I'm posting now is a modification of a review I wrote just after the movie hit theaters, you can find a variation of this review on most movie sites. Anyway, here we go, my review of Scream 4:


I can't believe just how bad this movie turned out to be, but more than that, I can't believe all the appropriately negative reviews I'm seeing that are missing the reason why this movie fails. Forget all the claims of "the series is starting to show it's age." If that's true, it's only because the writer(s) can't seem to get his (their) crap together. At it's core, this series is about a masked killer with a knife. He's watching you, and no one knows who he is. Evidence suggest it's someone you know. 


That should be able to work. 


It worked in the first two (mostly). 


Here's a good reason to give for why this movie sucks: No one in this movie cares. About anything. Not each other and not the circumstances they find themselves in. I can buy that this series is set in a world where everyone is obsessed with horror movies. It's contrived, but that's fine with me. I just can't understand why it is that, in a group of friends, when one person gets murdered, the others go to a party just after they're done screaming. 


I should say, though, that I'm being a bit unfair to Neve Campbell (Sidney), Courtney Cox (Gail), and David Arquette (Dewey), whose characters remain fairly consistent with the earlier movies. You do get the idea that these characters truly exist for one another. When one of them is in trouble, the other two come running. The supplemental (they never really take hold) cast, however, are the worst example of expendable 2D nameless victims as I've ever seen. They're all young and pretty (with the exception of Raury Culkin...His lips and eyebrows...Jesus...), but they're all too clever for their own good and lack charisma. They're not interesting or captivating! There are only two new characters in the whole movie (which is PACKED with new faces), who come across as reasonable and interesting in any way, and they aren't given enough to do. The film is also suffering horribly from what used to be the series' defining factor: it's wit. 


All of a sudden, every damn character that walks onto the screen has some quip to make about horror movie clichés. It's no longer clever to make fun of yourself if that's ALL you do, in the same way that George Lucas' overuse of CG reduces the intrigue of CG. Too much is too much! And not only that, but we're subjected again to the movie-within-a-movie Stab, which was once used by the film makers to show why they're good at making horror movies. In the Stab series, characters are attractive and dull and the writing is unrealistic and goofy.


 Scream 4 suffers from every stupid b-movie hiccups that the Stab movie wanted to point out as being a mistake.


 So here we have a "real world" horror movie where, for some reason, characters are quipping as they're bleeding out. Far too many characters have a quick little insult or joke they'd like Ghostface to hear just before they die. It's gruesome to watch, especially one absolutely cringe-worthy moment about midway through the film where a boring character whose hardly been used dies from what might be a physically impossible stab, but not before blurting out a great little reminder of a previous joke. Barf. The wit of the series is gone, replaced with characters who faint with perfect comic timing, and who just won't shut the hell up. Everyone is a horror movie expert, and everyone knows all about Sidney, Dewey, and Gail. To illustrate that point, 18 year old kids refer to Sydney Prescott as "Syd," as if they've known her for years. It's annoying.


There's no mystery here. People are dying on screen, but they don't seem to mind, and possibly worse, the world around them doesn't seem to either. 


So why should I? 


I got lost in the plot. I've been a very dorky fan of the series for years, watching Scream 3 without hesitation (if you know the series at all, you know how significant that is). 


I don't watch these movies to watch people die in funny clever ways. The humor isn't supposed to be at the fore front, it's not meant to intrude on the human life-or-death situations these kids find themselves in. It's meant to be human and natural, establishing who these people are and why I should care. For these reasons, the reveal to the killer(s) falls flat. 


I will say, though, that moments after falling flat, it blows up into one of the most embarrassingly overacted sequences I've seen of any movie. 

I've read a lot of reviewers talking about how the ending to the movie is very modern. They're right, to be sure, but modern doesn't mean clever or creative. I do think there's some merit to the general idea, but ultimately, it comes across as corny and contrived. I'm a big fan of this series, and if you are as well, then I say without hesitation go see it, but if you're just in the mood for a good movie, you won't find it in Scream 4. You deserve better.

TL;DR Scream 4 sucks. Don't see it unless you want to spend the following hour picking apart how the mistakes could have been avoided.

Impressive Technology

I don't know whether or not you read my last post, where I talk about Ryan Dunn's death and think about death itself, but at the end of it, I joked that the next time I posted, I'd just write about Nintendo.

Well guess what: evidently I wasn't joking. I'm going to talk about Nintendo.

I bought a 3DS recently, and it really makes me question the universe and what happens when we die.

It also makes me ignore my girlfriend and play Zelda.

Now, I could easily write a long entry here about how awesome Zelda is, and how awesome I am for playing Zelda (which is awesome), but instead, I want to talk about the 3DS system itself.

I'll actually start by explaining the 3DS' predecessor, the Nintendo DSi. It had two cameras, and because of that, it had a lot of fun filters and programs to take crazy pictures. You could take a picture of yourself and a friend, and the system would then determine how alike you look, and then guess at your relationship. For example, here is a picture from the DSi of my sister Kristen and me (from YEARS ago):

Pretty stupid. Pretty fun. You could also use different wacky frames for a picture. Here's Bobby showing off that feature:

You could also add in little pictures of cat ears and big eyes and stuff. Or even distort the image your taking. To illustrate those points, Allie and Daisy:

My favorite feature of the camera, though, was it's ability to combine the faces of you and your friends. First you would take a picture of yourself, and then your friend would try and take a picture of themselves from the same distance, with the same expression, and you'd wind up with some cool/funny combination of your features:

So you can see that the resulting pictures are pretty blurry, but they're also pretty generally well done. I mean, the merged picture of Kristen and me is horrible, but that's because we were being horrible. We look like an old woman. But that merged picture of Bobby and me looks like a combination of the two of us. Pretty weird and cool.

So now we're back at the 3DS, which is, again, the successor to the DSi. It has 3 cameras this time. One on the inside, two on the outside (so that you can take 3D pictures). I've been playing games on it since I got it, but when Bobby came over the other night and was checking it out, we remembered how much fun it was to screw around with the camera on the DSi. We wondered whether or not you can still combine faces on the 3DS. And we found out...You can:

....And:

...Jesus.

This is a very important story. It's also an experiment.

I'm going to go ahead and write out a story of something that really bugged me. When you're finished reading it, I want you to think about what you would have done, and how you would have felt if it had happened to you. Or maybe just how you would respond to me telling you this.

Then I'll tell you the correct response.

It all started last November when I got a job temping at Johnson & Johnson. I was the hot new kid on the campus, and obviously people took notice of me. And the people I'm talking about...is actually just one lady who makes sandwiches in the cafeteria.

I mostly kept my head down and worked, but it seems that she just took a shine to me.

It started out small, like asking how my day was. That was already pushing the threshold of my friendliness, but I'd tell her, "fine."

Now, I'm a vegetarian and a creature of habit, by the way, so I was pretty much getting the same damn cheese sandwich whenever I went to her station. Sometimes I might get a veggie burger from the guy across the room, though.

Obviously, I wasn't even safe from her then. She'd shout, "What, are you cheating on me?"

I'd look back and smile/grimace.

Then she started trying to memorize what sandwich I usually got. I'd walk up to her and start ordering, but she'd cut me off, look like she was thinking hard, and just sort of randomly blurt, "provolone...tomato...uhh...and [I'd try to jump in] Wait! Pickle? Then I'd say, "lettuce," and she'd start apologizing to me for not memorizing what I like. Loudly. While other people wait on line. I felt as though it looked like I expected her to know what I get. To other people, I just looked like a prick.

So whatever, that temp job ended, and I went on to better things (such as having Quick Chek sandwiches made by a woman I call Eyebrows Lady). About a month later, I got hired for a different job at the same J&J site.

On my first day back, the damn sandwich lady, who I had mostly forgotten about, asked me where I'd been. I told her that my last job had ended a month earlier. She looked offended and said, "and you didn't say goodbye to me?"

Christ. WE AREN'T FRIENDS!

Okay, so all that to explain this:

The other day I was on the line for a sandwich, because I don't learn. With about 5 people ahead of me, the sandwich woman notices me waiting on line. AS A BUSINESS WOMAN IS ACTIVELY ORDERING FOOD, the sandwich lady holds her finger out to silence the her, turns to me, and holds up one of the rolls I usually get my sandwich on,

"Hey! Here, take this, just in case I run out of it by the time you get up to me."

She said it with urgency that suggested there'd be hell to pay if I didn't get my fucking olive bread, with a twist of doing me a huge favor. So I had to walk through the 5 people ahead of me to take the roll. It was just strange enough to attract the attention of all the bored/boring office people.

A sweaty guy joked, "Hey, no cuts! Heh...heh..."

Some giant went, "Well! I guess we know what YOU'RE ordering!"

A lady, speaking WAY too loud says, "Hey, always good to have someone in the cafeteria looking out for you!" Her voice actually echoed.

And the last guy gives me a fucking pat on the back as I walk back to my place in line.

The worst part is that I could easily see a whole stack of that type of roll.

Office jokes are so stupid and irritating. They're not even jokes, they're mostly just basic observations, spoken through a smirk.

So that's it. I know it's not a big deal or anything, but it is annoying. It's as annoying as any brief interaction can be. Wouldn't you hate that?

And now here's the correct response to me telling you this story:

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

That's what my girlfriend said. And unfortunately, she's right.

"So that woman just tries to talk to you and asks you how you are, and you hate her? She tried to do you a favor and make sure you got the bread you like, and that pisses you off? I don't know why you tell me these things."

"..."

"And then those people tried to be friendly and joke around with you, but you just frown like a weirdo?"

I think I stammered here. Or grunted like a caveman.

"Honestly I think you're a little agoraphobic."

"What, no, you're crazy."

"No, Will, you always tell me these stupid stories about something that freaked you out and it's always like 'someone smiled at me,' and they always end with you talking about how horrible that was. Seriously, I don't know how I'm supposed to respond to this."

"Well, I thought it was funny."

"What are you going to do when we have kids? What are you going to do if you have to go to a parent-teacher meeting, and I can't go? Are you just going to sit next to the other parents and frown?"

I was about to answer, but -

"And then you're going to come home and I'll have to hear all about it?"

Jesus.

To be fair, I'm completely aware of the fact that it's irrational for me to freak out in situations like this, and I usually neglect to mention the part where I contributed to the stupid office humor and got along with everyone. But I can't divorce myself from finding these little teeny interactions worthless and annoying. I feel like it should really be acceptable to say to people,

"I don't mean to be rude, but, oh god...you're really weird. You're being weird toward me. Stop it."

So that's how you should have responded, but I really hope you relate to me about all of this.

I've got some work to do. For starters, no more sandwiches.