By Levi Jacobson
Kevin Williamson wanted to make a gritty finale to the Scream series, but his plans were derailed. In a 2009 interview, Matthew Lillard, who played killer Stu Macher in Scream 1, explained that Williamson had written a script in which his character was designed to the mastermind and manipulator behind the events in Scream 3. This provided great potential because it could really wrap up the trilogy and provide motivation for the killings in the third film. This plan never came to fruition because of the Columbine shooting of 1999 which happened three weeks before Scream 3 was scheduled to go into production. Executives rejected Williamson’s plan to have two killers (Stu macher and unnamed pawn) because of the two teenage shooters who planned and executed the mass killings. Kevin Williamson pulled out of the movie because the executives didn’t want him to make the movie he wanted to make, and Ehren Kruger wrote the new script.
Kevin Williamson is a great writer, and he could have found a way to make Scream 3 work; Ehren Kruger’s claim to fame, however, is that he wrote the three worst Transformer movies and is responsible for the character Roman Bridger, who is the lamest Ghostface (rivaled only by Billy’s mom). Roman is a faulty villain because his motivations make no sense. We first encounter him as the director of Stab 3, the Hollywood blockbuster in production, where most of the film is set. As a character, he is a forgettable and annoying Hollywood stereotype. All he cares about is getting his movie made. When the cast starts to be murdered off, and his film is canceled, he is seen screaming and complaining to basically everyone and seems totally ineffectual. He does not appear for most of the rest of the film until we see him in a coffin with a knife through his chest. There is no time to suspect him. You almost forget about him until he takes off his mask and is revealed as the killer.
By this point, the audience doesn’t care. The screenplay is so heavily retconned that no viewer actually cares. According to the screenplay, Roman Bridgers is Sidney’s half-brother, Maureen Prescott’s son who was fathered a scandalous Hollywood party given up for adoption. He was denied by Maureen, and this is supposed to explain why he wants revenge on Sidney and Hollywood. In the only good line of the movie, he says, “I’m a director, Sid. I direct.”
It seems like everything in the screenplay was built around the killer even though the killer doesn’t make sense. Scream 1 is about suspense. Scream 2 is about deconstructing the genre. Scream 3 is about convenience, flawed story-telling and violence for the sake of violence. In Scream 1, it makes sense that “everybody is a suspect.” In Scream 3, they stick to this motto, but only for the “shock” value.
The third movie in a trilogy is almost always the worst, and even Randy agrees. Jamie Kennedy appears in a posthumous video in which he explains the rules for surviving trilogy:
If you find yourself dealing with an unexpected back-story, and a preponderance of exposition, then the sequel rules do not apply. Because you are not dealing with a sequel. You are dealing with the concluding chapter of a trilogy. That’s right. It’s a rarity in the horror field, but it does exist, and it is a force to be reckoned with. Because true trilogies are all about going back to the beginning and discovering something that wasn’t true from the get-go…. So if it is a trilogy you are dealing with, here are some super trilogy rules.
- You’ve got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won’t work. Shooting him won’t work. Basically, in the third one, you’ve gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up.
- Anyone, including the main character, can die. This means you, Sid. I’m sorry. It’s the final chapter. It could be fucking Reservoir Dogs by the time this thing is through.
- The past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest! Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you.”
These rules do and do not apply to the movie. Sidney’s mom comes back as an inexplicable ghost, but no main characters die, and the way “the past comes back” is pathetic. Calling yourself out does not make bad writing acceptable.
This film is full of flaws. My favorite flaws are:
Top 10 Flaws
10. The murder of Patrick Warburton. This is a casting mistake; you don’t cast Patrick Warburton and kill him off after one scene.
9. The killer’s idiotic calling card: old photos of Sidney’s mom, Maureen Prescott.
8. The set of Stab 3, which has props and locations from Scream 1, which would clearly have been covered in Stab 1.
7. The Ghostface red herrings
6. The elaborate Hollywood pervert-nightmare-house with two-way mirrors and hidden passages that only serves the purpose of a forced backstory.
5. Long, tiresome chase scenes that make no sense.
4. The “jokes” that are misplaced and fall short.
3. Nonsensical retconning that diminishes characters like Billy and Stu.
2. Sidney’s “Ghost Mom.” In a horror-franchise founded in realism, the supernatural element doesn’t sit right with anyone.
1. The obnoxious, nonsensical voice changer that allows the killer to copy and mimic anyone’s voice after hearing it once. This technology does not even exist in 2019, let alone the year 2000. This is grim.
Scream 3 is a two-hour film in which there are only two good cameos (Jaime Kenney and Carrie Fisher), one good shot (when Ghostface steps out from a rack of Ghostface costumes), and one good line “I’m a director, Sid. I direct.” That is not enough for the “closing” chapter for a “trilogy”.
Overall, Scream 3 is off-brand. This movie is a joke and a cash-grab. The producers should have shut it down, but greed and money consume Hollywood. It’s pathetic. And it is ironic that they set out to lampoon and critique the very greed and corruption they ended up displaying.
© Levi Jacobson
with editorial support by Christine Gardiner
Levi Jacobson Reviews 