Scre4m (2011) - Halloween Diary 🎃 *

 

I just finished watching the basically uncut Scre4m (2011) from SYFY (it was rated MA; this channel is showing a lot more films with all the violence and profanity, while offering TV-14 versions that are more edited to include more audience), wanting to just lend some basic refreshed thoughts. I haven't seen this since I watched it in the theater back in 2011. I have a far more detailed review I plan to dissect later I had written right after I got back from the theater for it. I will be honest, Scre4m didn't really leave me as satisfied this second time around.

I still just loved Panettiere as Kirby, Emma Roberts' close friend. She is just cool and full of personality. I guess she is just engaging and charming, really a great piece of casting. If they had designs on taking this fourth film as a pivotal point to follow a next batch of franchise characters, I think Panettiere would have been a blast as a main star to lend her presence in the next film. But they decided she needed to suffer a devastating, tragic betrayal to shock the audience. There are just so many Culkins. Rory has the long hair and Jim Morrison laid back style of talk and movement...no he isn't Jim, but when I was watching him, that was the guy who popped into my head. He is a horror nerd but doesn't look geeky. Of course, even by 2011, casting out of Hollywood doesn't have an average looking person in Woodsboro. They all look like models. And Erik Knudsen as the "life's a blog, so why not record everything for the internet" Cinema class nerd sort of seems slotted in as Randy's successor, but his quips after being stabbed multiple times left me a bit "whatever". The reason I felt that way is I just don't think anyone stabbed in the chest and back will be quipping he's gay just so Ghostface won't stab him anymore...it is meant to just bring about a laugh as Erik was "on his way out". And, dammit, Emma once again follows this regrettable trend of talking way too much at the end when she could just shoot these people...Sidney is able to turn on the machine and charge up the shock paddles while Jill (Roberts) is holding a gun and yapping with Gale. I get that the funny point of a killer emerging when you believe he or she is dead is a trope poked fun at a lot in Scream series, but when shock paddles are used to charge up both sides of Jill's head, I have a hard time accepting she would even be able to pop back up and try to stab Sidney again. But, then again, I don't remember ever seeing Dewey walking with a limp or showing signs of being stabbed multiple times in the back, so this franchise has went the way of the very slasher genre it was deconstructing. For a lot of folks in 2021, Emma Roberts as a narcissistic bitch who seeks attention, fame, and all eyes on her isn't a big shock that would throttle us. But this was ten years ago -- OMG, it has been ten years ago!!! -- so she hadn't been such an American Horror Story or Scream Queens darling. She's gotten a lot of mileage out of variations on the Jill Roberts character. The Stab references -- I loved that Robert Rodriguez was credited as the director of the first one -- continue to be a treat to me. I always look out for them. I think in this film the Stab series was up to like 7. Funnily enough, "Saw" was mentioned, and I think that franchise is at like seven films! Gale trying to get her news reporter mojo back is a fun sort of subplot I found enjoyable, but poor Dewey as sheriff seems to be really caught in a pickle. The violence is more bloody and "stabby" than all the previous films probably combined. One of the girls killed has her entrails spilling out on the floor with her whole room very reminiscent to Tina's in "A Nightmare on Elm Street". That opening with three sets of two women being killed -- two of which are from Stab movies -- I recall really being a crowd-pleaser in the theater.