Scream 4: Critic Reviews

It's a giddy reminder of everything that made Scream such a fresh scream in the first place.

Like its predecessors, "Scream 4" replaces the values of storytelling and suspense with the value of being in on the joke. Unfortunately, in the 11 years since "Scream 3," the joke has gotten pretty old.

Scream 4 is fun, but more clever-clever than fiendishly ingenious.

Scream 4 is not without enjoyment. It's good to see familiar characters back and the opening moments are quite spirited. But it's a film about horror films without being a horror film itself.

The filmmakers' subtext - at least in the movie's first quarter - seems to acknowledge that you can't top the original. And they didn't.

The problem is, the movie doesn't really care if we are laughing with it or at it.

Craven no longer appears to be directing a cast of characters. Collectively, they're a knife block.

The unengaged and overlong fourth Scream plops its self-awareness on a new generation, who must endure a late-'90s flashback that's aged as well as the Nu-metal songbook.

Relying on obvious cliches doesn't seem ironic anymore, just easy. And though there are several genuine jolts, poor pacing leaves too much time between the silliness and scares.

Though director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson don't quite generate the lightning-in-a-bottle energy that made their first Scream movie a hit, they manage to awaken a 15-year-old slasher franchise that has been dormant for a decade.

Compared with so many of the rebooted slasher flicks, Scream 4 remains a cut above. No, that is not an intended pun.

It's not a disgrace -- indeed, it's not bad if you like that sort of thing -- while not particularly good, and yet it's one of the better horror films I've seen in a long time.

The actors do what they can in a film that doesn't care about human insights. The characters are almost preternatural in their detachment; if you were embedded in events like these, wouldn't you be paralyzed with panic?

This is quite effective as horror filmmaking and more pungent than anything [Craven's] done in a while.

For genre geeks, this can be fun - although nothing in Scream 4 is quite as clever as the filmmakers seem to think it is.

Retaining all the elements introduced in the 1996 original -- gut-clenching tension, sharp whodunit plotting, self-aware humor and a sympathetic core cast -- it advances the story to a new-media era.

Scream 4 is a total hoot. Assuming you can find the humor in knife stabbings.

There is some fun here, but ultimately it's more self-satisfied than anything else.

Overblown, overlong and overstuffed with genre self-referentialism, yet undercooked in terms of credibility, worthwhile new characters and memorable scares, it's not the razor-sharp reboot fans were hoping for.

The "Scream 4" (I refuse to write it the other way anymore) drinking game: Take a slug every time someone on-screen remarks how meta it all is.

As a "Don't open that door!" thriller which involves us, connects us with characters and frightens us, it fails.

The sardonic laughs are mostly gone in this wheezing cash cow and the cries don't resonate. The greatest shocks are the ones facing the now middle-aged main actors when they look into the mirror.

A perfectly acceptable Friday night, Scream 4 delivers plenty of scares without consequences, murder without depth, and a flood of legacy laughs.

"Scream 4" lacks the qualities that would make it a masterpiece, but it testifies to the cyclical nature of commercial storytelling in sharp, nearly timeless fashion.

Not even the smug irony endures -- it's hard to congratulate yourself for being in on a stale joke.