Hey folks, Harry here. If you are wanting to stay virginal regarding SCREAM 3... stay away, while in both reviews they do not reveal the 'ultimate' killer/killers, they do go into the film. Mulchpuppy doesn't like the film at all and wouldn't recommend it to a soul, but That Snot-Nosed Pom-Pom Slut Courtney Pierce really did dig it. And I know that both of these people are not shills for The House That Harvey Built. Also... this next paragraph is about the incident that appeared on TalkBacks yesterday and the truth regarding it.
WARNING.... There could very well be an ASSHOLE that posts the Identity of the Killer or Killers (as the case may be) in the headline of a TALK BACK below.... Scan Down at your own risk. Yesterday one ASSHOLE did this, BUT... And I repeat this... BUT He didn't know what the hell he was talking about and did not correctly identify the identities of the killer/killers. Not to say that it wasn't at least one of those, cause it may have... but it isn't the three names he identified and... isn't three names.
So I'll admit it - I really liked the first "Scream." Still do, actually. I think it was entertaining, sharp, well-written, mostly well acted, well directed, very funny and had a good number of twists in it.
"Scream 2" started out well but ended fairly messy with a "where the hell did that come from" twist at the end that didn't help it very much. But for the most part it was fairly entertaining.
So I walked into the theatre tonight hoping "Scream 3" would manage to surpass both of them and do a good job closing the series out.
Well.....that didn't happen.
I never thought I'd type this....but Kevin Williamson is sorely missed on this one.
I don't even know where to begin on this one. I suppose the skeleton that this film calls a plot is a good place to start out. I'm going to try VERY hard to not put any spoilers in. If you want to see the movie with nothing preconcieved...well, you shouldn't have clicked on this in the first damn place - I suggest you go elsewhere. Like now.
Okay, those of you who hung around seem to trust me. Thanks for the faith, gang.
Contrary to plot summaries I've seen, Sidney is NOT in Hollywood working on the set of "Stab 3 (which is a wholly fictional account of what happened after the events of "Scream 2.") In fact, she's nowhere near the set of the film which is where most of the first hour takes place. The cast of the film within the film are made up of Parker Posey, Jenny McCarthy, Deon Richmond and a few other people whose names don't spring to mind. Also on the set is Dewey, who's working as a technical advisor on the film. Gayle Weathers is there as well for reasons I shalln't reveal at this point. Well, cast members start getting offed by yet another killer wearing a ghostface mask and it's up to our wacky cast of regulars to get to the bottom of this.
It was reported a while back that Neve Campbell wasn't on the "Scream 3" set too long which led to a lot of conjecture that she was going to be killed early on - nope, the fact of the matter is that she just isn't in a big chunk of the film. Instead we're stuck with The Arquette family bickering (for reasons not really given, they're broken up again so basically they're acting like they did at the beginning of the last film). This wouldn't be a bad thing if the dialogue was up to par, which it isn't. To spice things up, people get dropped every ten or fifteen minutes to keep us awake but unfortunately the murder scenes just aren't very well done.
A lot of the storyline hinges on Sidney's mother, whose murder started this whole series. A lot of investigation is done into her past and...well...it just isn't very dramatically satisfying. Also fairly bland is the interaction of the "Stab 3" cast. They're all fairly annoying (and yes, Miss Indy Queen Parker Posey is fairly blase here as well). It isn't the actors' faults - it's the script that leaves them nothing to do but bitch about how they either A. are too good to be making slasher films OR B. needed this film to jumpstart their young careers. All this "in the business" shit is dull and has been better done in a hundred other films.
Then there's Sidney - when we do see her she's haunted by nightmares of her mother - wow, coincidentally there's a lot of stuff about her mother! It's all a little too blatant for its own good (though I will admit that one of the nightmares gave me a surprise Evil Dead 2 vibe. That could just be me, though.).
The biggest problem I saw with the film is that they tried way too hard to link the events of the film with the events of the film within the film. Wes Craven already did this in the last "Elm Street" movie and it didn't work too well there either. No surprise that here it's just annoying and occasionally confusing (although there's at least one good gag involving there being three separate scripts of the film just to throw off the internet sites).
About an hour and twenty minutes into the film we shut it off and had a little intermission (someone had to go to the bathroom, a few people grabbed a smoke, whatever). At that point I thought I had a damn good idea as to how the film was going to end. I also vowed that even if the film didn't go that way, it'd have to do some serious work in its last act to make up for what was a fairly disappointing first half. Well, I was wrong on both counts.
The last half hour of the first film was, in my opinion, fairly intense and fairly rewarding. In the second film, I was surprised and disappointed when I realized that the film was wrapping up. There was no intensity whatsoever.
The third film attempts to score some intensity, but it just doesn't pan out. Once I realized the characters were in the final location (it took a bit) I was disappointed. The setup to get everyone there was rushed and more than a little sloppy. But when the killer was finally revealed, I was downright annoyed. When the killer revealed his motivation I wanted to throw my drink at the screen. "THIS IS WHAT THE FIRST TWO FILMS WERE BUILDING UP TO?!?" It's not a bad idea, I'll admit. But it's as completely out of left field as the last movie. I'm not going into more detail on the end than that.
Some other things worth noting:
In one scene, power is cut to the house but the killer faxes them. Um, don't faxes require a power source as well? Sloppy.
We've all seen the video of Randy in the commercials. It was a smart idea and actually Jaime Kennedy does a good job with what is essentially a VERY brief cameo. But the method of how they get the tape doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense.
There are a few funny cameos. I hope nobody reveals them. This means YOU.
I was surprised with the events of the first ten minutes - but it didn't seem at all like the beginning of the first two films. I would've liked the sense of familiarity here.
Nice to see Patrick Dempsey again.
All in all, I was fairly disappointed with the film and plan on not recommending it to anyone.
Yeah, like anyone would listen to me.....
Mulchpuppy
And now... for the exact opposite reaction here's That Snot-Nosed Pom-Pom Slut Courtney Pierce.
The Rules of a Trilogy, as related by the sadly-deceased and sorely missed Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), involve heaps of exposition and reevaluating past events with current knowledge, an upped body count, and stunning reversals. Well, Scream 3 does just that, and for the most part, quite satisfactorily. As far as other movie trilogies go, it is neither a kinetic Ewok-fest (the flawed Return of the Jedi) nor a Ripleykilling journey into darkness (the viscerally beautiful Alien3) nor an evolution and extrapolation with a new major adversary introduced in the mix (Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). What Scream 3 is, is satisfying. After four years and change and three films, I have grown surprisingly attached to Sidney, Gale, Dewey, and Cotton.
Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has been living a peaceful and paranoid life in seclusion. But when the Ghostface Killer (and no, I don't mean the gentleman from Wu-Tang) starts making Hollywood twentysomething sushi, she finds herself in Hollywood, on the set of Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro. The set is laden with umpteen variations on the typical Hollywood cliché figures: the wunderkind director (Scott Foley, from TV's Felicity, with really bad hair), the salacious producer (Lance Henriksen, from Aliens, Near Dark, Pumpkinhead, and TV's Millennium), the bohunk (Matt Keeslar (from Waiting for Guffman and The Last Days of Disco), the vapid delicate woman child (Emily Mortimer, from The Ghost and the Darkness and Kenneth Branagh's upcoming musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost), the vapid bimbo (Jenny McCarthy, who does more with this part than she has in any of her other misbegotten film appearances and shows more potential than she has since her delightfully surreal MTV show), the token black character for urban advertising (Deon Richmond, who played the young Eddie Murphy in Raw), and the police detective who's seen too much (played by Patrick Dempsey, from Heaven Help Us and the immortal pizza boy/male sex worker epic Loverboy). Suffice it to say, carnage results.
I will say that the smartest thing for Hollywood to do right now is to batten down its hatches against the onslaught of Parker Posey. She has always been one of the most interesting character actresses and indie queens in contemporary filmmaking (Waiting for Guffman, The House of Yes, Dazed and Confused), but her turn as Jennifer, the actress playing Gale Weathers in Stab 3, is a starmaking performance the likes of which the movies haven't seen since Rupert Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding. To say that Posey owns every scene she appears in goes without saying. And while Posey steals away the film, its heart lies with Courteney Cox Arquette and David Arquette. The big shift in the relationship between the characters of Dewey and Gale are reflected best in the real-life marriage of Cox and Arquette.Their chemistry has evolved into a charming bond (laden with the occasional bout of bickering), and the characters reflect that.
But what these films depend on is strong direction. Wes Craven understands catharsis, and that is one of the reasons why I think he's an interesting director. After his Meryl Streep project Music of the Heart, it is as refreshing as the breath of spring to find him back at the reins of an engine of terror as revved up as this one. If you've read his original script for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (before it got slashed by Stephen-King-in-prison-auteur Frank Darabont), you know that he is a firm believer in upping the stakes for the third outing.
Much had been made in the reactionary post-Columbine minefield that is recent modern filmmaking of the concerted effort that had been made at toning down the violence in this film. Truthfully, it is not noticeably any more or less violent than the last one. There is, however, what has become a stylistic trademark of the film series, wherein characters address the nature-vs-nurture aspect of what causes serial murder. The sly subtext of the film (and series, as it is resolved) is that it has been making its own statements on that debate in the course of its narrative in a much less direct way than the characters themselves say it.
Original screenwriter and series creator Kevin Williamson found himself too busy with both his own directorial debut Teaching Mrs. Tingle and his now-defunct TV series Wasteland, and the writing duties fell to Miramax/Dimension's new golden boy, Ehren Kruger (writer of Arlington Road and the forthcoming Reindeer Games). Does he continue in the spirit of the other two films? For the most part, the answer is yes. There are moments of surprising emotional resonance in the film (although nothing as mindblowing as the Cassandra/Fall of Troy sequence of Scream 2), and an ending that I dare call touching. Structure-wise, the film certainly benefits from Kruger's presence. At no point does the film seem slack (an unfortunate flaw in the second film), and any awkward memories of that film's Scooby-Doo bait-and-switch ending are banished with this film's conclusion.
In addition, cinematographer Peter Deming has redeemed himself entirely. Gone is the angular flatness of Music of the Heart, and it appears that he has relearned what made his work on David Lynch's vastly underappreciated Lost Highway so striking. Much of this film takes place in very low level light, and yet the shadows become part of the film. To use the phrase chiaroscuro would be exaggerating slightly, but it does aptly reflect the deft placement of light and shadow in this film.
I love horror films. But more than that, I love horror films with good characters (note: this should explain the vast schism between I Know What You Did Last Summer and its tragically inept sequel). And I have come to love the characters of Sidney, Dewey, and Gale. The Scream trilogy ends for the viewer as it should, with affection and care for its characters, and quite a few thrills and chills.
That Snot-Nosed Pom-Pom Slut Courtney Pierce.
