I grew up with the Scream films and loved their awareness of the Horror genre and its clichés. So when I heard original creators Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson had helmed a fourth over 10 years later I was very excited. The tagline for the fourth instalment is ‘New Decade New Rules’ which is not strictly true but there are so many intertextual references and pop culture references that all is forgiven. The plot to this film has been very secret with critics and fans afraid to give away spoilers and rightly so, let’s just say Sydney Prescott returns to Woodsboro to promote her new book and incidentally it happens to be the anniversary of the original Woodsboro massacre, cue Ghostface.
It was great to see the original cast back together and good to see that the film still doesn’t take itself too seriously but manages to retain some genuine jump in your seat moments. I was waiting for the big ‘surprise’ and while I did not predict the end, it was a bit of an anticlimax. However, this is a fun film full of horror codes and conventions that flatters the audiences’ expectations and yet flips them upside-down and around until you don’t know what the rules are anymore! Scream 4 is perhaps much more fun and enjoyable if you have grown up and loved the Scream films. It is not an astounding piece of filmmaking but it has enough nostalgia and self-references to be appealing again and again. A true guilty pleasure.
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