- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
83It's about time that another Scream flick came along to gouge the new cliches out of their sockets. Scream 4 does it in grandly Guignol style.
-
80Craven guides us expertly down a series of blind, bloody alleys, a journey that's more pleasurable than frustrating. On account of his steady hand, the last act is as good as could be expected: skillfully conceived and entertaining in its preposterousness.
-
80The kills themselves are both bountiful and bloody, the movie references are brilliant and bloody, the funny is very frequent and very frequently bloody, but to say any more would ruin the boo.
-
75Don't be late to this homecoming of director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson's horror series, which begins with a twisty opening sequence that's bloody fun.
-
75A strange concoction, clever and self-knowing in the extreme and yet operating in primal ways that bypass wit. Something about it feels very modern.
-
75The film isn't as concerned with terrifying you as it is with showing you a good time, culminating with an over-the-top climax that is simultaneously utterly ridiculous and enjoyable.
-
70Existing in a self-contained universe, Scream 4 is its own remake (Screamake), sequel (shriekquel), parody and critique. Thus it taunts and pleases audiences, mocks and justifies itself and makes any review redundant.
-
Apr 14, 201170The burden of creative responsibility feels heavier here than in any of the previous installments, ditto the trauma of seeing teenagers get stabbed to death. As a result this is quite effective as horror filmmaking and more pungent than anything he's done in a while.
-
67Some of the riffs are really funny and/or expertly scary. Others have the feel of awfully snappy dialogue crafted by middleaged people trying a little too eagerly to sound like the young people from whose mouths the banter flows.
-
Apr 14, 201165It would have a very good shot at being entertaining were it not so outwardly concerned with being important.
-
63For genre geeks, this can be fun - although nothing in Scream 4 is quite as clever as the filmmakers seem to think it is.
-
63It's fun to see that charming underreactor Neve Campbell, looking about 20 minutes older, back as Sidney Prescott.
-
60The generational mix of actors works well enough, although Campbell too often seems stranded with little to do until the climax.
-
60It's almost really cool, without quite being really cool.
-
60The picture delivers enough of the expected goods, if seldom with the wit or panache of the series' best.
-
60Don't go in expecting scares so much as laughs. Scream 4 is a better "Scary Movie" than any of the "Scary Movies" ever were, from its inventively gut-busting kills (watch out for that mail slot!) to the unintentionally humorous sight of the three leads acting as if they're in three separate films.
-
50Scream 4 is so obsessed with the self-referential element that made the original Scream unique that it loses the capacity to be genuinely scary or funny.
-
50Why doesn't anybody just buy a gun? I guess the female characters spent all their money on tight tank tops.
-
50Between a diabolically funny start and a surprise climax, Scream 4 offers nothing more than a series of gory deaths that grow tiresome with repetition. The rating is a hard R, but Craven and Williamson keep it soft at its core. "Scream 1" is still the only keeper.
-
50It's hard to sustain that cheeky meta humor, and the film seems to just give in and join its slasher brethren, devolving into a string of gruesome, but unoriginal, slayings.
-
50It's rare for a sequel to extensively acknowledge its own pointlessness, let alone make the unnecessary nature of its existence a recurring theme, the way Scream 4 does. Then again, the Scream franchise has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to deconstructing itself and the rules of the slasher genre.
-
50All through the movie, Scream 4 lets us know that it knows exactly what it's up to - and then goes right ahead and gets up to it.
-
50Scream 4 has a smart beginning, featuring Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell, and one well-delivered line at the end that would have brought down the house in a better movie.
-
50A fast-starting film that quickly piles meta, self-referential elements on top of each other until they no longer make much sense, and the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own coolness.
-
40Too self-referential for its own good by half.
-
40After a promising start that uses Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell to perfection, they settle into their old stomping grounds as if they'd never left - and that turns out to be a letdown.
-
40The central conceit of the characters' fates being determined by the "rules" of horror movies feels irredeemably tired; a clever idea that was worth one movie.
-
40A desire to Know What You Did Last Installment is likely to be the biggest draw for Scream number four, but if this proves to be the last in the series, it's a bloody shame it ended not with a Scream but a whimper.
-
Apr 13, 201140If there was ever a horror film that made fans of the genre feel old, it's Scream 4.
-
38The problem is, the movie doesn't really care if we are laughing with it or at it.
-
38It's a fitfully amusing, not remotely scary slasher picture.
-
30The enjoyable moments are limited to Alison Brie, funny as Sidney's publicist, and the final recasting of the movie as a backstage diva drama. As ever, the self-reflexive horror stuff is superficial, loveless, and constant-a ladled-on sauce to disguise what you're eating.