Product Description
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In Scream 4, Sidney Prescott, now the author of a self-help
book, returns home to Woodsboro on the last stop of her book
tour. There she reconnects with Sheriff Dewey and Gale, who are
now married, as well as her cousin Jill (played by Emma Roberts)
and her Aunt Kate (Mary McDonnell). Unfortunately Sidney s
appearance also brings about the return of Ghost Face, putting
Sidney, Gale, and Dewey, along with Jill, her friends, and the
whole town of Woodsboro in danger. The newest installment in the
accled franchise that ushered in a new wave of horror in the
1990s is written by series creator Kevin Williamson and directed
by suspense master and director of the first trilogy, Wes Craven.
The film stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Emma
Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin, Anthony Anderson, Adam
Brody, Mary McDonnell, Marley Shelton, Nico Tortorella, Marielle
Jaffe, Kristen Bell, Anna Paquin, Lucy Hale, Shanae Grimes, ee
Teegarden and Brittany Robertson.
From .co.uk
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Without a refresher viewing, the details of Scream, the 1996
collaboration between horror-meister director Wes Craven and
writer Kevin Williamson (who also famously chronicled the ways of
wayward teens without so much bloodshed as creator of the TV
sensation Dawson's Creek) might be a little hazy. But even
through the fog of memory, it's a pretty sure thing that texting,
Facebook, live video streams on smart phones, and references to
the Saw movie franchise were not major narrative devices. Even
so, there is a common thread that yanks this inventive
resurrection of the series back to life and ties it quite
cleverly to the first, second, and third Scream installments.
Summed up, that reach is captured in the word meta, which is
pretty much what makes Scream 4 such a hoot as it scampers along
on such a high plane of conceptual ingenuity. That several
characters use the word in describing the action they're
participating in makes the entirety of circular plot points,
referential dialogue, and general level of self-reflexive action
all the more exuberant. There are a few causes for honest screams
in the action, even though the obvious raison d'être for Craven
and Williamson's reteaming is to make audiences yelp with delight
that trumps genuine fear pretty much every time.
Original cast members Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Neve
Campbell have all returned for the reunion, which also introduces
(and largely kills off) a new set of young but very familiar
faces recruited for the festivities. The sizable ensemble cast
includes Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Alison Brie, Hayden
Panettiere, Marley Shelton, Rory Culkin, Adam Brody, Mary
McDonnell, and Heather Graham, among many others who make up
visitors or inhabitants of the imaginary town of Woodsboro, USA,
scene of the meta-movie carnage that began 15 years ago. The
excuse for this round of action is the return of original
surviving victim Sidney Prescott (Campbell), who is making a
hometown stop on her book tour. As the heroic survivor of the
various incarnations of Ghostface, the -wielding killer in
Scream's first trilogy, Sidney has become a celebrity and
purposefully shrugged off the victim label, but still lives on as
a folk hero. Turns out she's especially popular with Woodsboro's
high-school population and the many horror film buffs who
constantly analyze their every activity in relation to the
behaviors of movie characters and the rights and wrongs of what
to do when there's a killer on the loose. It therefore surprises
no one that Ghostface has returned to haunt Sidney, including
retired reporter Gale Weathers (Cox), her now-husband Sheriff
Dewey Riley (Arquette), and the assortment of teenage dopes who
saturate the entire venture with theatrical gouts of gooey, black
blood. The movie-within-a-movie franchise Stab is also a major
player in Scream 4. Its sequel count is now up to seven as we
discover in the briskly crafted and very funny opening scenes. In
fact, Scream 4 is constructed with smarter precision than any of
its predecessors and would require a lot of brain power for
someone who feels up to the task of trying to figure out who
Ghostface is this time and why the killing has started again. But
taking the story seriously pretty much defeats the purpose of the
absurdly entertaining formal achievement that Craven and
Williamson have created. All the stabbing and screaming and
intricate (il)logic of horror movie conventions are simply part
of the mysterious amusement of a concept that will not die, now
delightfully retooled for a new generation. --Ted Fry