Oh the irony of it all...
After surviving the second wave of ghostface killings, Sidney Prescott has retired to the mountains to live in peace and work as a phone call therapist. Sadly for her she is about to be dragged back into the nightmare because the production of Stab 3 is rocked by murder and the killer is leaving pictures of Sidney's dead mother at the crime scenes.
I have to admit that I once never gave this film much love, I loved the first two to such a degree that I felt this third and final instalment was way off being a fitting closure to what was at the time a trilogy. Yet as time has wore on I have really grown fond of the film, Parker Posey no longer annoys the hell out of me, the once jarring itch of watching the makers kill off a fave character of mine in the opening sequence is something I now view as a masterstroke, and the twisty ending that was once an irksome pest has moved on to be the perfect "trilogy" closure.
Scream 3 has its tongue firmly in its cheek, it's aware of its number and it's aware of its formulaic root, so in spite of treading familiar ground (I mean come on gang, have you not learnt nothing from your previous experiences), the returning characters still have our undivided attention. While the transporting of the story to Hollywood, with its movie within a movie structure, is fresh and adds a new dimension to proceedings. New additions to the scary fun are Patrick Dempsey, Emily Mortimer, Lance Henriksen and the afore mentioned Parker Posey, and all of them add greatly to the mysterious plot unfolding.
The death quotient is still high, and the Wes Craven school of whodunitry is well and truly open, and I personally feel that this one is easily the funniest film of the three, witness Jay & Silent Bob turning up, a Carrie Fisher sequence that once heard will never be forgotten, and a video appearance by passed on geek god Randy Meeks. Scream 3 closes the "trilogy" just fine, it's got bags of energy and a glint in its eye, now if only I could get a copy of the uncompleted Stab 3 off the internet - and if only there wasn't to be a part 4 further down the line... 7/10
CinemaSerf
February 14, 2023
5
Not even a brief cameo from "Princess Leia" herself - passing lively comment on George Lucas's casting techniques, can save this entirely derivative trequel. Amidst the filming of "Stab 3", people start to drop like flies almost exactly as they might following script of this soon to be completed masterpiece. The new slasher starts as he/she/it means to go on, by dispatching poor old "Cotton" (Liev Schreiber) and his girlfriend before turning attention to the old guard of "Sidney" (Neve Prescott), Courteney Cox ("Gale") - and their movie-star doppelgängers whilst the indomitable "Dewey" (David Arquette) laudably, but ineffectively, keeps a look out as the corpses pile up. This is a really poor rehash of the original with almost exactly the same plot with the same red herrings, screeching hysteria and audio-induced jump-points. Although the structure of the story is marginally different, the ending is just as ridiculously left field and reminded me of something Agatha Christie might have drafted before she tossed it on the fire. This gift has stopped giving for Wes Craven, time to stop!
**_Scream 3’s_ lackluster screenplay and unimaginative kills leave a film that is a bore to watch.**
The meta-narrative of trilogies throughout the film does not make up for how abysmal the plot was. This film creates so much lore for the past movies seemingly out of the blue, muddling up the continuity for shock value. It added very little to this film and felt forced. The entire plot point of Sidney’s mother being a former Hollywood actress was pretty lame, especially with the added plot point of her being sexually assaulted by a movie producer. It may be personal taste, but I absolutely despise when films add that plot point, as it feels incredibly hypocritical since it is something that genuinely happens to an industry, they are involved in. The love triangle between Gale, Dewey, and the Gale actress was pretty dumb and felt undeserved, as we have not seen Gale and Dewey actually together in any of the films.
In horror films, you can have a good movie with a terrible plot as long as the kills are great. Unfortunately, Scream 3 continues the trend of having boring kills with no imagination. There has been only one truly unique kill throughout the entire franchise, and the rest are unbloody stab kills. I understand the meta being about stabbing with a knife, as the in-film movie is called Stab, but please add some gore to it. There is nothing, no blood squirts or body horror, and it caused the entire movie to be boring.
Our performances were exactly how I would describe Scream 2, with both Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox being the standouts and David Arquette being average at best. All of the new characters were pretty uninteresting, all of the actors in the film were annoying, and the movie producers felt generic.
The direction of this film felt pretty uninspired. I am not sure if Wes Craven was forced to make this movie by the studio, but nothing about it felt unique and creative. It felt like he was phoning it in for a paycheck.
Overall, there were not a lot of redeeming qualities for this film, and it left me feeling unfulfilled as the final credits rolled. Hoping Scream IV has more in store for me than this lackluster film.
**Score:** _45%_
**Verdict:** _Poor_
