Director Wes Craven has stated that
this will be the last of the Scream movies. On seeing Scream
3 you may be thankful that it is. It is not that Scream 3 is a bad movie, more
the feeling that the story has run out of steam.
Scream 3 reunites us with the surviving
cast of Scream 2. This time round the story is set in
Hollywood where Stab 3 is being shot and where the cast is being killed off in the exact
order that they die in the film. So enter reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney
Cox-Arquette) who reunites with her old flame Dewey (David Arquette) and, together with a
new cast of potential killers, attempt to unmask the killer before he/she slays them
all.
Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell), still
haunted by the happenings of the first two films, also arrives on set when the
killer forces her out of hiding to face the demons of the past, one more time.
Half the fun of the Scream films is
trying to guess who the killer is before he or she is unmasked. The major turnoff in
Scream 2 was the fact that the killers were two characters who
together would have been on screen less than 10 minutes. The audience never had a
realistic chance of guessing who the killer was and as a result the movie lost some of its
appeal.
Did this happen in Scream 3? I'm
not going to say as it may ruin the movie for the people who haven't seen it yet, but
let's just say that you may find, as I did, the ending all a little too convenient.
Part of me hopes that the Scream
trilogy does keep going because I feel, with a little more creative writing, that the
story and its characters still have a lot more to give.
I still remember how the first film
scared the living hell out of me and, despite two slightly less impressive sequels, I
would still be one of the first to buy a ticket to Scream 4 to
see if they can recapture the magic of the original film.
Impossible? I don't think so.
- Adam Matthews
