Movie Info
Movie Name: Scream 3
Studio: Konrad Pictures
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): February 4, 2000
MPAA Rating: R
Again…seriously!?!
When Cotten Weary (Liev Schreiber) is killed, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is forced out of seclusion to join Gale (Courteney Cox) and Dewey (David Arquette) in tracking down the killer and ending the vicious circle once and for all. The killings begin to take place on the set of the new Stab movie and Sidney learns that her mother’s past might be part of the reason that she and her friends have become targets again.
Directed by Wes Craven, Scream 3 ditched the original script by Kevin Williamson (the creator of the series) and went with a new writer (Ehren Kruger). The results were disastrous. Critics disliked how a movie about cliches had become one and the idea of a trilogy was much less developed than the ideas of a sequel in Scream 2.
Is she really supposed to be me?
The movie plays a lot on the Hollywood idea, but it goes too goofy and leaves the much more real and dangerous plot of Scream 2 behind. The movie within a movie was a great idea for a side plot, but as the main plot it kind of fails. It was a fun wink in the first movie, but here it just dominates it. The whole half-brother aspect seems so artificial and thrown in…I had a hard enough time with the mother of the killer from Scream being the killer in Scream 2.
Once again a great cast is gathered, but as opposed to the other films, it feels squandered. The cast of the Stab 3 movie (Parker Posey, Jenny McCarthy, Matt Keeslar, Emily Mortimer, Deon Richman) all feel like fodder. Scott Folley made his big screen debut as the director of Stab 3 and the modern horror movie star Lance Henriksen also has a roll. Patrick Dempsey plays the cop who might be playing an angle, and Liev Schreiber meets an early death for a fun character.
Ghostface…Ghostface? Come out please!
Scream 3 also feels like a big of a joke because there are so many guest-stars who appear throughout the movie. Horror producer Roger Corman makes a cameo. Carrie Fisher shows up for no apparent reason other than a quick joke. Heather Matarazzo shows up as Randy’s sister (Randy happened to make a tape of rules of a trilogy before being whacked in Scream 2), and it never is really even explained why she is on the set to give the characters the tape. The biggest thing that breaks the fourth wall is when Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith show up as Jay and Silent Bob on a tour. It doesn’t make sense and really makes the movie even more of joke.
It is kind of fun to see the deaths within the stage house of Sidney and the behind the mirror scene almost mimics the behind the soundproof glass scene in Scream 2. For the most part however the deaths are normal and not “new” enough to change the game.
Scream 3 was a pretty big disappointment. It is sluggish and loses the edge that the first two movies have. I don’t care about Sidney’s mother or her past and by the final scene I kind of want the movie to just end. It isn’t the worse movie, but building it up as a trilogy, you expect a grand finale…not a whimper. There has been a history of the final movie of a trilogy to be the weakest part…too bad Randy wasn’t there to make a list of all the movies where that occurred. Scream has a reboot in Scream 4 in 2011.
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