"It's hard to remember the impact that Wes Craven's Scream
had back in 1996; a postmodern horror pastiche which parodied the
conventions of the genre while still scaring up enough full-blooded
shocks to frighten even the most world-weary slasher fan. Ironically,
the original Scream had its media-savvy roots in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, a brilliantly bizarre postscript to the long moribund Nightmare on Elm Street franchise
which put an unexpected sting into the tail of a rash of increasingly
flatulent sequels. There's no such creative spark to the equally
late-in-the-day Scream 4 (2011, Eiv, 15), which comes a decade after the dreary Scream 3
and contains plenty of knowing references to fatuous sequels and
"postmodern, self-aware meta-shit" alongside clunking updating
acknowledgement of the rise of Facebook, Twitter, torture porn et al.
Despite rewrites by Ehren Kruger, the extent of which remain a
subject of debate, Kevin Williamson's script – which sends
survivor-turned-writer Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) back to the town
of Woodsboro, where the Ghostface killer is reincarnated once
again – seems peculiarly retrograde in terms of style, substance and
surprises. Considering his role as producer of 2009's utterly
unnecessary remake of Last House on the Left, is it not time for the once revolutionary Craven to stop recycling his back catalogue and take a stab at something new?"
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