By Levi Jacobson
Scream 4 is a relief after the anti-climactic Scream 3, which disappointed fans of the Scream franchise and fans of movies in general. Scream 4 was the best resurrection of a franchise that fell from grace until Halloween 2018 blew everyone out of the water, critics and audiences alike. This movie is shot like Scream 1. It’s a welcome return to gothic Woodsboro, and the shots mimic iconic scenes and imagery from the first two movies of the franchise. The film returns to its roots in the movie-within-a-movie cold opening, which feels as lucid and dreamy as Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the film that solidified Wes Craven’s career.
This recursive opening sequence is mind-boggling. It begins with a phone ringing and two teenage girls sitting on the couch and deconstructing the tropes of the torture porn genre, a term that refers to the movies that followed the 2004 psychological horror movie Saw, which was characterized by flashbacks inside of flashbacks, which made it truly unique. Later iterations and sequels focused more on making every death bloodier and gorier than the last. This birthed a new sub-genre of horror that was very popular at the time Scream 4 was made and released. So, as the film opens, we believe that we are watching a scene from Scream 4, in which two girls decide to watch Saw IV. Meanwhile one of the girls is texting with her “hot Facebook stalker,” and they start receiving threatening messages and phone calls, which signals that this film is going to carry us from the analog to the digital world of horror. By the four-minute mark, both girls are butchered, and it is revealed that we are watching Stab 6.
The next scene opens with two more girls, played by Anna Paquin and Kristin Bell, discussing the sad state of contemporary horror and how all the films are the same.
Paquin: A bunch of articulate teens deconstruct horror movies until Ghostface kills them off one-by-one. It’s been done to death, the whole self-aware, post-modern, meta-shit. Stick a fork in me.
Bell: I like the Stab movies … There’s something about a guy with a knife who just snaps.
Paquin: “It’s so predictable, You can see everything coming. There’s no surprise.”
Half-way through her next sentence, Kristin Bell’s character stabs her twice in the gut and asks, “Was that surprising? … Now sit down and watch the fucking movie.” At this point, it is revealed that this is actually the opening scene of Stab 7, and two girls in Woodsboro are watching it on video.
These girls are discussing the science, art, and repercussions of the movie-within-a-movie scenario. At this point, we are back in Woodsboro, and Scream 4 has truly commenced. The killer attacks in their tried-and-true method. The killer calls and threatens, “Think of me as your director. You are in my movie now.” This establishes the twist of Scream 4: the killers are recording and uploading their kills to the internet. Moreover, the first two “real” kills are homages to and recreations of classic deaths from the first two films (Cici being thrown through a window in Scream 2 and Tatum being killed by a garage door in Scream 1). By the eleven-minute mark, there have been five kills, which is almost as many as in the whole of the first film.
This movie calls back to the original in many ways. It also wraps up the franchise in a deserving way. Jill Roberts and Charlie Walker are trying to reboot the Woodsboro massacre, and this is the best way for the creators to comment on their old work. It also gives the writers the opportunity to comment on how unnecessary reboots are. The clever quips that defined both Scream 1 and 2 are back and they are better than ever! This is the well-deserved finale for the Scream franchise. It ditches 90’s logic and brings us into the digital age.
Scream 4 is about corruption in social media and being famous for the sake of being famous. It’s also about the state of the horror genre, but this time it’s different. It’s targeted at reboots. Sidney Prescott is touring her book about how it feels to be the Final Girl, and she finds herself back in Woodsboro, the place where it all started. Here Gale Weathers and Dewey are happily married. Dewey has become sheriff, and Gale is failing to cope with writer’s block and her envy of Sidney’s success. Sidney is staying with her cousin, Jill Roberts, whose friends constitute a relatable teenage cast, the next generation of killers and victims. There is another Ghostface murderer copycat on the loose. In the third act, it is revealed that Jill Roberts and Charlie Walker are on this killing spree to get the same fame and attention that Sidney and Randy received. They are recording and posting their kills to the internet and framing Jill’s boyfriend Travis by linking their posts to his account. Then Jill turns on Charlie and makes it seem like Charlie and Travis were the killers (mimicking Stu and Billy from Scream 1). Her goal is to become Sidney, to be the Final Girl in the eyes of the world. She tricks the media for a little while, but Sidney, Gale, and Dewey track her down and kill her. The movie ends with many news reporters calling Jill “a hero” for killing Ghostface.
Even though the audience knows Jill is the killer, the media doesn’t care. They buy her story without any evidence and praise her as a hero. This shows how the media can be played like a fiddle and how they care more about getting the story than reporting the facts. As Jill is wheeled into the hospital, bloody and on a stretcher, she is attacked by a mob of reporters. This shows how the media is desperate and heartless, but Jill basks in this invasion of privacy. The reporters ask, “How does it feel to be a hero?” And it seems like she has gotten what she has always wanted.
In one of the last shots, we see Jill and Sidney lying together on the hospital floor. It’s a mirror shot. Jill is dead; Sidney is alive. They have the same hair, same skin tone, same expression. We see how Jill wanted to become Sidney and died because of that desire. Sidney wanted to protect Jill from the killer and ended up killing her, thus blurring the lines between hero and villain. As the camera pans over Jill’s lifeless face we here a reporter say, “Jill Roberts… an American hero right out of the movies.”
This is a meta end to an iconic and truly meta franchise. This is also the last statement of the last film Wes Craven directed before his death in 2015. This is a perfect ending to a series that unpacks the complicated relationship between violence, movies, and the media.
© Levi Jacobson
with editorial support by Christine Gardiner
Levi Jacobson Reviews 