Frissons 4

L'important, cependant, c'est que Scream 4 livre la marchandise ludique avec une assurance étonnante, et s'empêtre dans le strict minimum de longueurs en tous genres; c'est une machine bien au point qui sait exactement quoi faire pour nous plaire et ne se gêne pas pour nous en servir des portions doubles.

The self-awareness is an inherent part of the Scream chemistry, and certainly one of the more entertaining components, because it lets us laugh at our own reactions.

Craven's film makes an effort to serve both old and new Scream fans in its audience. Though some fans from the 90s may still find parts of Scream 4 tedious, newcomers are sure to be excited by what this latest entry has to offer.

For the first ninety-minutes or so, Scream 4 is a pretty damn fun slasher film, and I was enjoying more than any Scream film since the first. Sadly, the film goes badly off the rails in the last twenty minutes.

Though there is a moderately clever twist involved, by the time it's revealed, after the mind-numbing bloodshed, it's hard to really care.

Between a diabolically funny start and a surprise climax, Scream 4 offers nothing more than a series of gory deaths that grow tiresome with repetition.

Like its predecessors, Scream 4 replaces the values of storytelling and suspense with the value of being in on the joke. Unfortunately, in the 11 years since Scream 3, the joke has gotten pretty old.

The movie pulls off some jump-in-your-seat surprises, but hair-raising fear of the Freddy Krueger sort isn't one of them. Which is the price to be paid, I guess, by a franchise that's always valued its sarcasm as much as its scare.