Scream 3 (5 Stars)

Scream 3 (2000) – When the Horror Becomes Hollywood

By the time Scream 3 arrived, the slasher genre had already eaten itself alive through imitation, and Wes Craven knew it. So instead of pretending to resurrect something fresh, he and writer Ehren Kruger (standing in for original scribe Kevin Williamson) leaned even further into Scream's defining trick: horror that knows it's horror. The result is a film that isn't just about killing the survivors of Scream 2, it's about killing the franchise itself, or at least dissecting it on the operating table.

Set against the backdrop of Stab 3, the in-universe film series inspired by the original Woodsboro murders, Scream 3 folds in on itself until the line between fiction and reality all but disappears. Every scene is both a murder sequence and a movie scene, a set within a set. Characters walk through Hollywood replicas of their own traumatic pasts, and Ghostface's violence becomes a twisted form of direction. If Scream was about how horror movies shape behavior, Scream 3 is about how the machinery of Hollywood rewrites the truth.

This is where the film's “rules of the trilogy” come into play, courtesy of Randy's posthumous videotape cameo – a highlight of the film and a meta masterstroke. He reminds the survivors (and us) that in the final act of a trilogy:

The past comes back to haunt you.

Secrets are revealed.

The killer's powers reach “superhuman” proportions.

Craven dutifully checks these boxes: hidden parentage, retconned motives, and a villain who practically embodies the ghost of franchise lore. The meta-commentary doubles as catharsis; what began as parody of slasher tropes becomes a self-portrait of Hollywood's own cyclical storytelling and moral amnesia.

Still, Scream 3 isn't as sharp or as sly as its predecessors. The absence of Williamson's script shows in the pacing and dialogue; the balance between horror and satire tips toward the latter. It's more playful than scary, more commentary than carnage. But as a metafilm, it's fascinating; a horror movie about the impossibility of ending a horror movie.

In the end, Scream 3 doesn't just close a trilogy; it closes a loop between artifice and authenticity. By the time the credits roll, we've watched not only a film about films but a film haunted by its own franchise DNA–a slasher turned séance.

Though generally considered the weakest film in the trilogy, Scream 3 has hordes of fans who praise it and attribute it cult status. It stands as a fittingly self-referential finale – a meta-horror about the rules, myths, and monsters that movies themselves create.

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