Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Scream 3

By the time SCREAM 3 came out in 2000, I was in college and had a couple years of freelance movie reviewing for the McMinnville News Register under my belt, so I can proudly say I was paid to see this movie. I also saw it at the McMinnville Cinema 8 (now 10) that I was paid to help build. So I got paid to watch a movie in a theater I was paid to help build. I was going to just re-print my News Register review and interject with my current thoughts when necessary, but I reread the review and it is God awful and embarrassing. So, I won't be doing that. WHO DID I THINK I WAS?! A little prick I guess.

So, Craven's back on board for SCREAM 3 but we've lost Williamson who has been replaced by Ehren Kruger (hehe) a writer who went on to write terrible things like TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN and TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON.

This time out, people connected with the production of the movie-within-the-movie, STAB 3, are being murdered. This includes Liev Schriber (a holdover I forgot to mention from the previous movies) and Jenny McCarthy (a woman who would prefer children die of preventable diseases rather than get life saving vaccinations). The movie's director, Scott Foley, is pissed that the bad publicity is shutting down his production. The movie's stars (Emily Mortimer and Parker Posey among them) are also not happy.

David Arquette has gone from bumbling deputy to bumbling bodyguard and boy toy of movie star Parker Posey who is playing Courteney Cox's character. Courteney Cox is drawn to the murders, of course, and gets all jealous about this whole situation.

You might notice there's not much Neve Campbell talk, yet. That's because she's not in this movie very much. Her character has retreated to a house in the wilderness where she spends her time alone, working for a women's crisis hotline. To be honest I kind of can't remember why she ends up going to Hollywood to hang around the scene(s) of the murder(s), and I just watched this movie a couple days ago. Anyway, she shows up and the gang's back together.

This is probably the worst film of the series, and I guess you could make the argument that that is because Williamson is not behind the scenes. The movie is well directed and well acted, but it just feels kinda lifeless. It continues down the path of settling for normal slasher status, rather than subverting anything. There's a painful cameo from Jamie Kennedy's character in which he explains the conventions of trilogies, but the scene is contrived, feels shoehorned and lacks the effortlessness of Williamson's more assured fanboy dialogue.

Once again, it's a mystery, but once again, basically anyone could be the killer because once again we don't know much about any of the new characters. I guess my favorite of the new characters is probably Parker Posey as the actress hired to play Courteney Cox's character, but I think this is largely just because it happens to be Parker Posey and she's hard not to like. Still, she does have chemistry with Courteney Cox, and the scenes in which the two of them are sleuthing things out have more energy than most of the rest of the movie, including a moment in which they run into Carrie Fisher for some reason.

So anyway, I said this is probably the worst SCREAM flick but guess what? It's way better than the worst NIGHTMARE flick, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.