After watching the first three installments in the Scream franchise in rapid succession last week, I took a mini-break before watching part 4. Just to cleanse my pallet a little bit. Much like the last film I watched, Piranha, I had this film marked as having watched before, but I had no recollection of the events that transpired in the film (I may vaguely remember the defibrillator ending). I'm not sure why, because Scream 4 is fantastic. I almost want to turn around and watch it again right now. Above all, it really made me think about the evolution of horror films from Scream's release in 1996 to this film's release in 2011 and beyond.

Upon its release in 1996, Scream immediately reminded filmgoers and, more importantly, producers that the horror genre can be a very lucrative business. Horror had languished in the 90s, coming off of the glory days of the 1980s (although I have discovered several fun 90s titles, mainly thanks to Vinegar Syndrome). Wes Craven himself had tried to jumpstart the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with Wes Craven's New Nightmare in 1994, including using the meta approach that encapsulates the Scream franchise. Opening against Pulp Fiction, New Nightmare never stood a chance of dominating the film conversation of that day, much less make anyone excited for a new way to tell an old story.

When Scream proved to be a hit, audiences were suddenly inundated with horror films featuring young casts of familiar faces found on television. Films such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Faculty really tried to duplicate the success of Scream (I really want to revisit these films to see how they hold up today, but I remember enjoying them at the time). And then the Columbine shooting happened in April of 1999 and suddenly teenagers killing teenagers was not such a good look.

Luckily, 1999 gave us The Blair Witch Project, and horror films went away from the slasher formula again into supernaturally focused (including a film like Final Destination). When the audience's appetite for horror came back, studios were not exactly sure where to go, so they went where they always go--let's start remaking stuff. First they started remaking Asian horror films that most filmgoers either had never seen or did not have easy access to (sure, I had Netflix in 2000, but did most people?). So we get The Ring and The Grudge and so on. By 2003, studios start reanimating the IP they kept the rights to, and we get a reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a very profitable film. Also by 2003, post 9/11, America is plunged into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and suddenly the torture porn subgenre is born, where films like Hostel and the Saw series take center stage. By 2009, just about every major and minor horror film from the last 30 plus years had been rebooted or reimagined. Except for Scream, whose last installment was released in the year 2000.

Probably the biggest asset to Scream 4 is bring Kevin Williamson back as the writer of the screenplay. After his initial success with Scream and Dawson's Creek, Williamson was dealt a blow with his DOA directorial debut Killing Mrs. Tingle (renamed Teaching Mrs. Tingle after Columbine). He sort of languished around for a while until The Vampire Dairies became a hit on the CW (well, as much as a CW show could be considered a hit). By coming back for Scream 4, Williamson was able to "reinvent the rules" of horror films as presented in Scream and update them in regards to reboots and remakes. And in case we forgot the current state of horror, Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) vomits out a long list of recent reboots/remakes to make sure we know (or remember) that we are not looking for originality, but for ways to stay close to the original text while slightly perverting it to try to keep fresh.

Now Scream 4 did not feel like a reboot to me in and of itself. But by linking the Stab films that were created as film versions of the "real life" events depicted in Scream, we, as viewers, really get to dive even deeper into the meta-ness Craven and Williamson created 15 years prior. Scream 4's opening is fantastic, featuring a film within a film technique that keeps the viewer on edge and immediately engaged. I know I was in.

We get a fresh cast of characters, which I know I wanted after Scream 3 really focused on the main trio of Sidney, Gale, and Dewey, and gave us pretty bland supporting characters (save Parker Posey's outstanding performance as an actress playing Gale Weathers in Stab 4). And while these new kids did not quite reach the heights of the kids in the original Scream, I appreciated the effort.

We get some other differences that helps elevate Scream 4: Sidney is not a victim anymore and she is quite aggressive and proactive here. She has lived through these machinations multiple times at this point, and she's not just going to react. Ghostface is much more menacing here--too often he is depicted as clumsy and accident prone. Not here. There are so many red herrings here that I know I could not pinpoint who the killer were, although I did have a pretty good feeling about one of them. And they make sense. Plus placing the impetus in internet fame at the dawn of that ongoing phenomena feels perhaps even more relevant today than 10 years ago. A perfect closing shot by the way (also Craven's last).

Where has horror gone in the last 10 years? The Cabin in the Woods pretty much put the exclamation point on meta horror. We got an unfortunate run of PG-13 horror films. We got Blumhouse films that produces some very interesting films, albeit some are more interesting (The Conjuring, Get Out) than others (Fantasy Island). We have films acquired by Shudder that also run the gamut of success, but at least it is being released directly to an audience. And we have auteurs like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers who are trying to elevate horror into legitimate art films.

So where does that leave Scream (2022)? Is it necessary? Scream 4 already very successfully gave us the rules of the reboot. What does this franchise have left to give us? I'm excited to find out, but I have to admit my trepidation.