Scream 4 (4 Stars)

Eleven years after "Scream 3", Ghostface returns to Woodsboro. Sidney Prescott is back in town promoting a book, while Dewey is now the sheriff and Gale is struggling to find a new purpose in life. But this is a new decade. Mobile phones, webcams and the Internet have changed the way young people communicate, horror films have changed and, most importantly, the rules have changed.

The original films played games with the familiar rules of slasher films. Eleven years later, horror has moved on. Remakes and reboots are everywhere, and a new generation has grown up believing it knows exactly what to expect from a horror film. Ghostface has moved on as well, using modern technology to play a new version of the old game. Sidney, Gale and Dewey have to learn that the rules they knew no longer apply.

Hayden Panettiere plays Kirby Reed, one of the new generation. She's confident, likeable and knows almost as much about horror films as Ghostface. She easily stands out among the younger cast.

"Scream 4" is a good film, but for me it doesn't live up to the first three. "Scream 3" brought Sidney's story to a perfect conclusion, and the franchise could have ended there. The fourth film finds a clever reason to bring Ghostface back, but it still feels like reopening a story that had already been completed.

There's another difference that bothers me even more: the music. The first three films were filled with bouncy songs that gave them a distinctive energy. "Scream 4" is acoustically much quieter, with songs only appearing occasionally. It doesn't matter whether they were 90's songs or contemporary songs; I simply miss the constant musical background of the original trilogy. "Scream 4" has Ghostface, Sidney, Gale and Dewey, but it doesn't quite sound like "Scream".

Success Rate:  + 0.4

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