SCREAM 4 AND THE SCREAM TRILOGY RETROSPECTIVE

All scary film lovers – get ready for April 15^th – the premiere of Scream 4. Ghostface is back and he wants more blood!

From the director Wes Craven – the internationally reknowned ‘king of horror’ – comes another part of the widely popular Scream series. Scream trilogy introduced a completely new look at horror and thriller films, playing with rules of the genre in a smart and deliberate way.

Who does not remember the opening scene of Scream where Drew Barrymore gets brutally murdered by a masked man quizzing her about scary movies over the phone? The movie shocked from beginning to end with suspense. But the main idea of the movie wasn’t scaring people or showing gory scenes. Wes Craven deliberately used stereotypes of the horror genre and incorporated those features into a typical Hollywood three-act layout. His intention was not to make fun of the genre but to pay a tribute to it. High-school teenagers being murdered, masked psycho walking around a small American town, terrifying backstory of rape and murder and of course – everyone is a suspect! All those aspects, so common in horror and thriller films of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, made Scream a perfect summary of this enduring and acclaimed type of film.

With Scream 2 and Scream 3 the idea was similar. Masterpieces built upon the boundaries of ‘the sequel’ and ‘the culmination of a trilogy’. As the character Randy Meeks – film buff and almost an insight voice of Wes Craven himself – explains the rules of each type of a movie, we start to understand the directors idea. ‘Virgins never die’, ‘the lead character always survives’ or finally don’t say ‘I’ll be back’ cause you never will! He describes the rules to other characters and guess what – he’s always right! The world created by Craven is not our reality – it’s the reality driven by the rules of the horror film, and everyone is a part of it.

So what should we expect from Scream 4? After all, the trilogy was closed. But horror genre is full of surprises – modern cinema finds new ways to entertain us and breaks the rules. Are Sydney, Gale and Dewey – the main characters of the original trilogy – going to die this time? Are virgins still safe? Who is the killer this time? We will find out soon but in the meanwhile check out some exclusive clips from Scream 4 on our website and if you haven’t done it yet – watch the original Scream Trilogy on Blu-ray!

Mat Kolodziejski