Scream 4

Scream 4 is not the typical fourth installment. Wes Craven did something phenomenal here. Though he is really good at what he does (thriller, horror), Mr. Craven is-unfortunately-an underrated director due to the fact that the genre of horror is an underrated category. 

It should not be and I say this despite the fact that I cannot stand horrors. (There is one exception though: Sleepy Hollow, directed by Tim Burton.) Most horror movies for me are purely functional. By functional movies I mean films that are enjoyable once, I get what I want then move on, forget it. But for that 2 hours, they do what they have to: entertain.  

Every once in a while I buy a ticket for a horror movie. As Craven once said, "Horror films don't create fear. They release it." After the horror I see on screen, I forget about my unsolved problems in real life. The bills, love affairs, and allergy are nothing compared to those people staggering in blood, groaning in agony. We live, at least.

Wes Craven was responsible for The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream (1996). Classic horror movies, now all part of popular culture. He once tried to escape the ties of his genre by directing a drama, Music of the Heart, back in 1999, starring Meryl Streep. 

In 2005 he made an extremely exciting thriller: Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, and Brian Cox. He could create thrilling atmosphere by making two actors sit next to each other for 60 minutes on an airplane (closed, claustrophobic place). Simple as that. This is something Hitchcock could do, not many others. What I found interesting is that despite the fact that it is a rather short film (less that one and a half hour), it could jolt me. While Hitchcock would have probably built up the story in three hours, Craven cut the film in real time. He thought people cannot sit in the screening room for such long time, so he scrammed excitement in a relatively short time. And it works perfectly.

Now, you might start to question the validity of my writing's title. I wanted to point out that Craven is a self-conscious director. He always minds the context: his previous films, the trend, present history and culture. Craven knew exactly that people are not going to accept a new scary movie. This film is not scary because of the murders. What proves this is that it does not even try to scare anyone. There is no slow moving of the camera through the dark hall, the orchestra does not play suspenseful melodies anymore. These kinds of one-minute inserts where you are supposed to get ready to be scared are missing. Craven is realistic. Murders happen the way they do, he does not want to trick you. He does not want to play with you heart-rate. This time he plays with your mind. 

Scream 4's key word is self-reflection. The movie is more like an essay on the the new trends in horror movies, the clichés and the new forms of clichés, and the series itself. I laughed more than screamed. I mean it in a positive way. It is rather a satire of horror. Almost every scene of the movie is about itself. 

The opening scene is creditably clever. It goes further than movie within a movie. Craven creates practically three opening scenes withing a fourth. He recalls the clichés that occurred in the previous Scream movies, and parodies them. Cervantes, at the beginning of the 17th century when chivalric romance was not in fashion anymore, wrote Don Quixote in which he satirized the tired genre. Craven did the same, but went even further. Raymond Chandler, after writing six of Philip Marlowe's detective stories, in 'The Long Goodbye' develops the genre of hard-boiled fiction by including social criticism. Craven in the finale of Scream 4 broadens the conflict of film and puts it on a higher level: the new American society. He brings in people's relation with the modern era of internet: video hosting services, the social network, publicity. Two horror fanatics in Scream 4 summarize: "Well, if you wanna be the new, new version, the killer should be filming the murders. It's like the natural next step in the psycho-slasher innovation. I mean you film them all real-time and before you get caught, you upload them into cyberspace. Making your art as immortal as you."

As I mentioned before, every scene includes elements of self-reflection. Therefore it would be painfully long to highlight all of them, and scrutinize the smart script written by Kevin Williamson, the original writer of the now classic Scream. Wes Craven not only points out the limits of horror, but offers new ways for the seemingly tired genre. It cannot be stated that Scream 4 reformed horror but it certainly is an improvement. 

Mr Craven, congratulations! 

Wes Craven