Scre4m (2011) **🎃🔪

I fail to mention Alison Brie, who I fell in love with thanks to "GLOW" and "Community". She's the agent with book sales and publicity on the mind, definitely fodder for crowd celebration when Ghostface gets her in the parking garage.

Working off my May 2011 user comments, I will add extensions in italics to them from how I feel now.

Basic synopsis:

Sidney Prescott(Neve Campbell)returns to Woodsboro for a book signing when a psychopath disguised as Ghostface starts butchering teenaged locals and it seems her niece, Jill Roberts(Emma Roberts), could be the main target..or is she? David Arquette returns as Dewey, now the Woodsboro sheriff, and he's married to Gale Weathers(Courteney Cox) who yearns for days gone by when she was a more established reporter with a reputation now quieted by small town living.

I brought that up in the first blog post later in the night of October 15th in regards to Gale. I thought her plot thread was fun because it is clear she was stuck in a rut because she put aside her career for Dewey. I'm shocked Dewey and Gail would return to Woodsboro after the third film had them in LA. Granted, no matter where Dewey and Gail go, it seems some version of Ghostface has a knife for them. Dewey wasn't endangered as much in the fourth Scream film. He was always where the action wasn't, which amused me actually. It seemed in the previous three films, his back was this big fucking target for multiple knife stabs. Gale, I don't think, was never stabbed in previous films, although in the first Scream she was beat up. Chasing after a new story, this go-around Gale put herself in serious jeopardy, getting too close for comfort.

Jill has two bff's, Kirby Reed(the wonderful Hayden Panettiere) and Olivia Morris(Marielle Jaffe) both of whom are certain to be on the list of victims Ghostface will pursue. The phone calls from the killer display a voice with a malicious intent, and as the movie shows, Ghostface isn't joking around. Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson include cell phones, Twitter, Facebook, the horror genre, and plenty of pop culture references in this brand new SCREAM film. The stunning camera work and film editing (by Peter Deming and Peter McNulty respectively) are top notch as the action—when Ghostface chases after Sidney and other potential victims—is intense as ever, although it is hard for Craven and Williamson to escape the familiarity of past SCREAM films.

Especially the familiarity part, I felt after three previous films that the opening of Part 4 just has a "been there, done that" feel that has lost a bit of the punch. Like the other films, familiar television stars, Lucy Hale ("Pretty Little Liars") and Shenae Grimes ("Degrassi" and "90210"), and Aimee Teegarden ("Friday Night Lights") and Britt Robertson ("Under the Dome", "Tomorrowland", and "A Dog's Purpose") get a big break as introductory victims (in Stab and Scre4m). Here's the thing, though: how many times can some new killer(s) in the Ghostface mask and costume stab a chest, back, or stomach before it becomes a bit boring. I remember feeling that way after several Friday the 13th films during a marathon not too long ago. Jason stabbing a body part in closeup sort of feels the same as Ghostface stabbing a body part. In Scre4m, Sidney, I want to say, is stabbed twice in the side and falls to the floor. I would think she'd bleed out. I laughed out loud when the mastermind comes to Sidney's hospital bed in a rage asking, "Why won't you just die?"

Marley Shelton has an amusing supporting role as Dewey's deputy, Judy Hicks( who is obviously in love with him, even making him lemon squares) as well as Anthony Anderson and Adam Brody as Keystone Cops who are posted at Jill's house, yet the killer is still able to kill a victim without their knowledge. Rory Culkin and Erik Knudsen are "horror cineasts" who have a film buff group at their high school (Knudsen runs a live blog, with a camera device he wears on his head to record conversations and interviews) and provide the movie with extra suspects/victims, along with Nico Tortorella as Jill's suspicious (on again, off-again) boyfriend Trevor.

There is a scene where Judy is in Sidney's aunt's house (played by Mary McDonnell, in a thankless role), slightly in the dark of the stairwell asking her if she remembered that they were in classes and at the same school together. Judy, I read, is returning actually to the next film. I'm anxious to see where she is at, because I felt they were really pointing at her as a problem in Dewey and Gail's marriage. She had a romantic interest in Dewey obviously, with how she would make googly-eyes when he appeared. Gail obviously noticed that, too. But she's so endearingly loyal to Dewey, rather dorky but too attractive to convince me she'd be this misfit.