Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Scream 4 gets a mediocre, generic teaser.


This thing, or a version of it, premiered last week at the 2010 Scream Awards, which are airing tonight on Spike TV. I wish I could say that this teaser gave me a renewed confidence for a project that was made purely as a money grab, and has been plagued by all kinds of studio tinkering from the get-go (the Weinsteins interfering in a horror film... no!). But this frankly looks as generic as can be, feeling less like a genuine sequel than a remake that they really wanted to make but didn't have the guts to. It feels like a mishmash of all three Scream films (high-school murder spree, tie-in movie being filmed/released, Sydney suffering from survivor's guilt), with a token nod to the last ten years of grindhouse-type horror. I'll happily eat crow if this turns out to be as good as the first two films, and the final bit with Lucy Hale is worth a chuckle. But with Lauren Graham leaving because her character had allegedly been dumbed-down, with Hayden Panettiere allegedly furious that her character had been bimbo-ized, and with original writer Kevin Williamson being tossed off the project and replaced by Scream 3-scribe Ehren Kruger, this feels like a cold-hearted cash grab for all who remain onboard. Oh, and unless they do what I thought they were going to do in Scream 3 (make Dewey the killer), my money is on Allison Brie. She currently stars on Community and co-stars on Mad Men, how much time will she have to become a cornerstone of the new Scream series?. This nostalgia-fueled retread opens April 15th.

Scott Mendelson

2 comments:

R.L. Shaffer said...

Craven confirmed during his press tour for My Soul to Take that much of the gossip surrounding Ehren Krueger's involvement (and the cast departures) was just that, gossip. He allegedly did a rewrite, but nothing that altered the core story or the characters significantly. So, if this stinks, it'll probably be Williamson's fault, or Craven's, since the guy, quite sadly, seems to have run out of steam as a filmmaker.

Anonymous said...

I'm not at all offended by the trailer. Its vague and doesn't really give me much to go off of. That's fine with me.

As for the production issues, they worried me too. However, i got to thinking, in the era of the first 3 Scream movies we had NO WHERE near the access to production notes/gossip/rumblings that we do today. Internet movie-buzz was a relatively new and growing thing. There could have been much more troubled production on Scream 2 than this one, but we don't know.

If this plays as an anniversary film (pretty good film but not as good as 1 or 2, but reminds me why i liked the series...a la Halloween 4 and H20) then, i'm down.

-Brandon

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