Reviews

I have to defend my rating of Scream 4 as I know many people hated this reboot. When you're rebooting a franchise that has been dead for 11 years you have to take extra care to make fun of every horror reboot trope you can think of because this is a Scream film after all. After the disaster that was Scream 3 we finally get a return to form by Wes Craven, the worst aspect of the movie is probably the lack of realism; this is a heavily romantic film. I don't mean romantic in the sense of smooching between David Arquette and Courtney Cox, I'm talking about the fact that 50 police officers can't catch a serial killer that kills his victims with a prop knife that gimmick might've worked in the late 90s and early 2000s but in today's surveillance state there's no way! Ghostface wouldn't last longer than 3 days especially in Los Angeles. Now looking past the negatives (way too much self-referencing, some bad characters, and sequelitis), we can talk about the good aspects, and oh boy are there a lot of good aspects. First off I love, love, love the new characters in the film (some of them), the short-haired blonde girl Hayden Panettiere was cute and likable for me, and the fact she wasn't the killer surprised me and made her death all the more heartbreaking. Anthony Anderson as the dumb cop was hilarious for the first 30 minutes of the film especially his death although I wish that was on screen. Emma Roberts as Sidney's niece was sweet for like an hour and a half of the film and I did not see the reveal coming. I'm not sure if it was intentional but all of the character names are based on the real-life actors and actresses' names which isn't funny but it's much easier to keep track of their names.

We start the film off with an incredible intro that may be one of my favorite horror movie intros. We wake up in Stab 7 that references Stab 6 then finally back to real life where two friends get hacked to oblivion. In the first half of the film, there was a bit where Emma Roberts and Hayden were stuck in Emma's room while across the street their best friend and neighbor gets slashed in a scene so obvious it will make you facepalm although the gore is great and the most realistic and ambitious of the franchise especially after watching the PG-13 blood in Scream 3. We go through Shaun of the Dead references a publicist of Sidney's dying in high octane and scary parking lot scene we get arguably the best scene of the movie where Courtney sets up cameras then all of them turn off Courtney goes to investigate and we get a fight scene where we think she's going to die but she doesn't. Finally, we get the seemingly final battle between five teenagers, Ghostface starts picking them off one by one and we get a hilarious scene where he is about to kill a high schooler that is recording his life (Wes Craven has no idea what teenagers do), and he says that he's gay in a horror movie so he can't be killed but Ghostface kills him anyways the joke was spoiled for me but I still laughed at my screen. We're at Hayden's house, 3 / 5 of the kids die including the video streaming gay dude, Jill's boyfriend and Hayden. One of the video streamers is Ghostface and the other Ghostface is Jill Roberts which surprised me apparently she killed them all for notoriety by becoming the teenage queen girl that saves the day kills the guy in the Ghostface mask framing her boyfriend all in an elaborate scheme to become famous. This was a great plotline and incredibly unique; she even goes as far as to smash her head and make it seem like she was assaulted and acted in self defense. The more I thought about this movie the more I liked it, after initially watching this film I was like at a 6 or a 7 out of 10 but upon further reflection I was thinking about what I could find wrong about the film and I decided you know what it's an 8, it deserves an 8, screw the consensus I f with this film.

A few critics and fans wanted Sidney Prescott to finally die at the end of the film where her niece Jill Roberts (Emma Roberts) seemingly kills her but oh wait guys Wes Craven saves her through plot armor somehow she wakes up and fights off her cousin after arriving at the hospital almost dead. Then crazy stuff happened. A defibrillator started flying, it felt like an action movie. It was freaking awesome. Then Sidney lives so a sequel can be made but oh wait Wes Craven dies the same year which means we have to wait until 2022 for the sequel directed by some other dude, my only disappointment about there being a fifth movie is the fact they killed all and I mean all of the new kid characters which means the next movie will have to reboot the reboot with an entirely new cast in the same city for the fourth time.

The second film in the Scream franchise feels like a two hour extension to the original story with the gang over at college. Right off the bat my biggest issue with the film is the death of Marty. It's not the fact he died; it's the damn way they killed him like seriously? He didn't even get a night time kill, they killed him in the damn middle of the school's campus. My second biggest gripe is the fact the whodunnit aspect of the film was incredibly dumb and soo far out that nobody can tell who it was because the culprit wasn't in the film for like an hour after the 30th minute. Then there was Steven Ulrich's mom that I didn't care for, and who came out of nowhere. The positive aspects of this are mainly Sidney, she's a great protagonist (arguably one of the greatest horror protagonists) and keeps it up in her second best performance in the Scream Franchise. No matter how bad this franchise gets (Scream 3) Sidney, Courtney and Sheriff Dewey will always be an awesome crime solving trio kind of like Scooby Doo without the dog. Also can I talk about Courtney like damn this is peak Courtney Cox. Whoever did Courtney's hair in the third film should be jailed. Sidney's boyfriend Derek Feldman is kind of cringe but also kind of cool sometimes, especially towards the end of the movie. Gale and Dewey are such a great couple I'm glad they got married in real life and Wes Craven made fun of that in the 3rd film where they get married both in the film and real universe. The soundtrack was new and improved it trys some of those cool 90s horror beats that pay zero tribute to the 80s and instead makes it on it's own which I can appreciate. Overall it was fun but I recommend finding and watching the 1080p remastered version of Scream 2 because the version I watched had awful video quality. Overall it's not a bad film; especially if you need more Scream content after finishing the first Scream then this is definitely for you.

In the era where Zombie hype was exponentially rising. Shaun of the Dead was the first film to make fun of how preposterous and hilarious zombie films could be. Turning the genre on its head into a low budget and entertaining Zom-Rom-Com (note; I need to talk about Shaun of the Dead as it had some influence on the Zombieland series). Zombieland followed up 3 years later to rave reviews it was thoroughly entertaining poking fun at the rules followed in Zombie survival scenarios. A few of these include only 4-40 people surviving the whole zombie apocalypse (somehow) and they have to stick together in a lord of the flies scenario cough Walking Dead cough. Abandoned Playground, Action Hero Duo team Tallahassee. Almost kissed by Colombus and Big Rock etc. Going on road trips was fun in the first film, in the second it felt like I was forced into a box to see bad CGI action taking place. Finally again with Little Rock and Big Rock betraying them at every turn was entertaining in the first film but far, far less entertaining in the second film be unique be interesting don't do the same old hashed stuff again I'm so sick of it. As a fan of Elvis, I was pretty biased in liking the 30 minutes they spent making Elvis references, which would be annoying to anybody that doesn't like Elvis Presley. Please keep this in mind. The White House was pretty badass.

From here on out there are spoilers (I still recommend watching the film if only for the nostalgia and final battle): Nobody was more overtly stupid like Madison in Zombieland Doubletap whom I hated with a vengeance she ruined the film for me. She made the film feel like an awful cash-grab sequel. To a dead genre that hasn't been popular since The Walking Dead. This dumb blonde bs gave me aids add anyone else and it would've been more entertaining the worst part about the dumb blonde character is THAT PEOPLE LIKED HER PERFORMANCE. Jesus Christ Why? I'll give the film credit for being just entertaining and funny enough that I could sit through its 100-minute runtime. The ending of the film was worth the other 110 minutes of pure cringe. The amount of kills that took place in the four seasons of the Walking Dead kill numbers in 20 minutes sounds pretty cool to me. I was expecting the same thing as the last film but they somehow made it more interesting even if Tallahassee running and the zombies not looking through the holed shields and biting at the people at the top of the building makes no sense. The Crane scene was very emotional and I think I would have been sad to see Tal. died because I liked his character a lot even in this mediocre film. I would've given it a 5/10 had the ending been bad but I decided 6/10 is fine.