Brief Thoughts on "Scream 4," or Wes Craven's *New* New Nightmare.

In the dozens upon dozens of mixed reviews of "Scream 4" (or "Scre4m," rather, although I'm pretty certain that won't affect the way you think it), I find it surprising that hardly any have mentioned "Wes Craven's New Nightmare," a sly work with which the new movie is unquestionably in tune. In Craven's 1994 riff on the "Nightmare On Elm Street" franchise, which at that point was six movies long, the director and cast members from the movies played versions of themselves evading attacks from their own murderous creation, as Freddy Krueger inexplicably found his way into the real world.

"Scream 4" doesn't break the fourth wall quite so radically, but it does contain a shrewd assessment of its own legacy and rebukes the very fact of its existence. As with the first "Scream," the ramifications of a movie that actively reviews itself are even stranger than watching it. Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson would make very cynical film critics.

In "Scream 4," self-awareness goes hand-in-hand with the legitimate tropes of a slasher movie. A decade since the events of "Scream 3," original "Scream" target Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell, looking impressively haunted and appropriately vacant) has written a New York Times bestseller about her experiences. Just as she begins to sublimate the demons of her past, however, Sidney must contend with the arrival of a new killer who has inherited the Ghostface mantle and apparently become fixated on Sidney's teen niece, Jill (Emma Roberts). Her friends and neighbors start dying, the police (now led by our longtime hero Dewey, still played by David Arquette, this time with amusing midlife quirks) shut everything down, and washed up journalist Gail Weathers (Courtney Arquette) tries to get back in the game. Outside of its multilayered storytelling qualities, the plot is standard stuff.

There are a few good, if not masterful, kills; the blood splatter has a legitimacy simply because Craven doesn't overplay the death, instead imbuing it with a cold finality. (The goriest demise only shows guts after the deed is done.) That doesn't make the movie particularly transcendent, but it maintains a singular intensity throughout. As horror movies go, this one doesn't break the rules, or even build on them particularly well, but it acknowledges their power with no less enthusiasm than the hilarious "Scary Movie" franchise.

Except that "Scream 4" is also reasonably scary.

Still, the movie falls in line with other entries by acknowledging the tradition behind its specific role in the series. Williamson's screenplay contains a relentlessly clever discourse on the nature of the franchise reboot, acknowledging the new heights of morbidity enforced by a generation of standards defined by torture porn. ("To survive now, you pretty much have to be gay," says a young horror geek.) I also loved the creation of an alienated character whose psychotic tendencies are enabled by social networking ("I don't need friends; I need fans"), although in telling you that I guess I've spoiled something. But not really. It's all over the Internet.

A couple of sequels ago, the "Scream" series began its weird journey toward mirroring its ongoing story arc with the film-within-a-film "Stab" series, a plot development that never really worked for me until now. In "Scream 4," the cinephilic obsession with the seven existing "Stab" movies (the first of which was "directed by Robert Rodriguez") by teen horror buffs peels back onto itself during the patently ridiculous--yet simultaneously energizing--opening sequence. The movie actually restarts three times before it gets going. The only person besides Craven who might be able to do something this outlandish on a commercial level might be Spike Jonze, but he wouldn't bother. In Williamson's screenplay, someone says "How meta can you get?" and then the movie continues as if that line were spoken as a challenge.

This form of genre deconstruction is the sort of thing that critics tend to do in reviews of entirely unironic fare. In this case, most reviews have taken up space reiterating the movie's message (horror conventions are fixed, so commercial horror is unimaginative) and condescending to it.

I find that a little unfair. Sidney Prescott is still a believably sad, disturbed creation, more alone now than ever before. Craven and Williamson take her seriously, which helps the movie succeed to a great degree. When the secret of the killer finally comes out, "Scream 4" doesn't feel nearly as fresh as the original, but that's exactly what I like about it. The movie amounts to a loud, unruly sigh, one that bemoans the inability to express newly frightening ideas on a grand scale, since they all sound the same. That doesn't do the original proud, but it services the ideas behind it, which is even better. "Scream 4" lacks the qualities that would make it a masterpiece, but it testifies to the cyclical nature of commercial storytelling in sharp, nearly timeless fashion.