Movie Review: Scream 4

Who knows what prompted director Wes Craven and his film-making cohorts to create this new instalment in the Scream series, the film franchise which almost single-handedly revived the ailing horror genre in the late 90s.
Regardless of the motivation, Scream 4 has arrived, 11 years after Scream 3 seemingly drew an end to what was becoming an increasingly ragged series.
But despite the best efforts of Craven, it's hard to view Scream 4 as anything other than a largely irrelevant curiosity with little new to offer, a throwback to a series which now looks incredibly dated.
The plot is standard horror-movie fodder - the heroine of the original films, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell, anyone remember her?), returns home to Woodsboro on a tour signing copies of her new book, based around the events she survived a decade ago.
And who would have guessed - all of a sudden people close to the luckless Sidney begin dying in exactly the same fashion as in the past, butchered at the hands of the so-called "ghostface" killer.
From there, it's pretty much Scream-by-numbers, with a few extra nostalgic nods to the past and in-jokes chucked in for good measure. Fans of the original trilogy will find plenty of familiar territory here.
Just occasionally, Scream 4 strays over the line by trying to be just a little bit too clever.
The movie's ham-fisted, film-within-a-film-within-a-film beginning and none-too-subtle swipe at the Saw series are particularly bad failings in this respect.
So, a nice nostalgia trip then.
But talk of Scream 4 "rebooting" the series for a new generation may prove to be premature, and the success of any future films (which are already rumoured) will depend largely on an injection of fresh ideas.
2.5/5
(R16), 111 minutes