What's Your Favorite Scary Movie? "Scream 4" Doesn't Top First, But It's Sure Bloody Fun!

I never went to a horror movie. And if I did, it was never willingly. The only time in my current memory is my mom taking me to see "Jurassic Park" at 7 with my brothers and sister. I remember watching it, but the experience of it, mind: The shrilling roar for the T-Rex, the screaming kids, my eyes wide and my knees in front of my face. And they were in front of my face. I didn't have class enough to at least be scared to shut my eyes or turn away like my role model adults. My legs steeled the terror. For about 90% of the movie.

Before that I thought it might have been fun, for my so grown-up self to man-up and see something frightening. My grade school friends were all big into dinosaurs then (and so was everyone else, after the movie's success), and why be left out? So I did what any adult kid would do, I yelled and screamed and whined and moaned to my mom to see "Jurassic Park" because so was everyone else! If you were 7 and had mom like mine you would know motherly resilience. It took a few months, but we saw it.

And I missed a lot of it. I redeemed my courage through home video. That also took a while, but after sitting through the movie many times, through shutting my eyes, or fast-forwarding, or pausing, or muting the sound, or turning off the TV or walking out of the room, I could say with some squeaky bravado that I had seen all of the movie and can remember everything, every detail and specie of dinosaur, to tell my friends. But of course they knew all about it. They were braver than me. After mastering the first T-Rex attack scene with storm and torrential rain and mud and bloody, frightened children, my friends could anticipate every scream and every beat. They could remember what color Grant's shirt was and what timeframe he lost his hat...

Thinking back on my childhood and my relationship with scary movies, I for sure didn't see "Scream" in theaters (I did see "Final Destination," but that's a different animal, of horror movies that stink). I was older, 10, but not much braver. I had to sit through it, with some more friends, countless times, before I could say I had seen the scariest horror flick ever released at the time.

Because today, close to 15 years after, seeing it again I knew every turn and every twist I couldn't jump even if I hiccuped.

I was ready to think "What was I scared of?!" Then, I watched "Scream 2," released less than a year later, and found before I hit "play" I didn't remember much about it. This time, I can tell you I jumped more than once. Not much for "Scream" #3, though, which was more by-the-books. (READ MY THOUGHTS FOR THE FIRST THREE "SCREAMS" BELOW)

So I can tell you...

"Scream 4" (2011) ☆☆☆

...that I liked the new one, the supposed not a sequel but first in a new trilogy, "Scream 4," (or "Scre4m") from the same old gang: horror-king director, Wes Craven, snappy teen-horror writer Kevin Williamson (his break was the first film), former movie-teen, now matured adult actor Neve Campbell, TV "Cougar Town's" Courtney Cox, and David Arguette. There's also DP Peter Deming (of "Scream" 2 and 3), who can still maneuver from the baddie's in widescreen, and composer Marco Beltrami, another who got his break with "Scream," who's booming brass was the soundtrack and standard for horror movie convention. When Ghostface chases, cue the loud, dangerous music!

"Scream 4" made me jump, not often, but it's still a good time. Not really scary, but cool and clever enough. It doesn't top "Scream," or even "Scream 2," but it sure kicks the crud out of "Scream 3..."

We're back in the 'burbs, a Northern Californian made-up small town, Woodsboro, where now it's become what Myrtle Beach was to "Jaws," the city is en-mass a celebrity. And on the main stage, Sidney Presscot, the long-standing surviver, returns home on tour after writing a self-help book declaring herself never again a victim. Well, she's about to, as the brutal slayings soon happen once more, right on bloody cue.

Everything happens down to the plot, just like the first "Scream." That's the point, anyway, as now the killer, or killers, mimic their slayings on the first original horror flick, "Stab," which itself is based on the events of the first film. A movie within a movie with a successful horror movie franchise! With that plot, we have the same old crop of teens: Emma Roberts as Jill, taking the place of Sidney. Her pal Kirby (Hayden Panettiere of "Heros") fitting as the role of the party girl buddy. Rory Culkin ("Signs") and Erik Knudson as horror movie-geeks Charlie and Robbie, splitting Jamie Kennedy's comic character. Nico Tortorella is in as the quiet, solemn boyfriend to Jill (killing the inner menace from Skeet Ulrich as Billy), who, easily, is tagged as a suspect. They are new (new new) characters also. Adam Brody ("The OC"), Anthony Anderson (of "Scary Movie" films, ha!) and Marley Shelton as deputy cops, and Mary McDowell as Jill's hurt mommy. There are also cameos (makes since, in a scary movie) that include Anna Paquin and Kristin Bell. Because they are cameos, you can guess what happens to them...

Some die. Some don't. All are suspects. They aren't that many, as with all the films, so it's easy to narrow it done. You might guess who it is (I did), but you can guess anyone. Really, you have, like, everyone I mentioned above, and maybe a few others. How hard could it be to hone in the killer?

Maybe that's what I didn't like so much about "Scream 4," and even the two preceding the first. Could the whodunit's be more complex, and better immersed. Yeah, it's a horror movie, simpler is better. But I like a good mystery. I would have liked to have been surprised on that level, because really all we have is the usual fright formula by Craven, and the knowing wit by Williamson, and it all played pretty well by the old, and young, cast. It's funny, "Scream 4" is all about poking fun at the formula, mixed with real shocks, but the shocks were anticipated, because of that formula, and the jokes and knocks weren't all clever either when it enters the same rein as the first three films. Again, I don't care that I could have predicted everything (which I near did), but why not be smarter, to be surprised by the shocks, humured more by the pans. I was shocked a little, I did smile some. Overall, I had a good time, because really Craven knows this franchise, and so does Williamson, and they up the punch. More blood, more surprises, more one-liners. They know the right balance. Everyone had as much a time as I had in that regard. Still, it wasn't surprising enough.

Actually, that's about all I have to say, only I might have rated "Scream 4" lower, but I feel I'm partial to the series. Besides,  I gave "Scream" the same...

"Scream" (1996) ☆☆☆

I could remember and anticipate everything now, at 24, but it sure scared the crap out of me at 10. Even in the present, in 2011, the movie is still the definitive horror movie concept, the rehash of horror movie cliche into a straight horror movie scenario: of a serial killer, or serial killers, terrorizing teens in quiet, safe suburbia. Nothing new there, but instead now the killer taunts and plays. He calls them in a cool, cynical masked electronic voice (iconically voiced, for all four films, by Roger Jackson), friendly chatting these girls up before turning menacingly into the host of a deadly game. A horror shocker that's meant to scare as it is to make you laugh, because these characters talk and pan about horror plots and they too are in a scary movie! I couldn't help but smile when it's mentioned big-breasted girls who can't act run up the stairs, and in "Scream" they actually do that! There are such other conventions about-faced and mimicked in the same horror fashion. All the exposition! They won't shut-up!

A gory slasher picture with some pretty good shocks, a terrific suspense opening (with the taboo of killing off a star so early), a creepy new madman get-up (the costume for "Ghostface"), cemented into this nutter, or nutters, making sadistic calls about horror movie trivia before jumping out, chasing and stabbing their victims to death. I also like, with "Halloween," "Nightmare on Elm Street" and others, that this takes place in the 'burbs. I think that's why these types of teen-slasher movies work. The gentility of the suburbs turned into hell. That last half of "Scream," in that large suburban house, as soon as everyone is either left the party or is missing and dead, and where soon the big bloody stab-out begins, worked so well. 

Three stars is me saying "Scream" can still scare now, is still darn clever, and hasn't lost it's fright or punch. I might have rated it higher, had it still scared me. This is coming from a guy once upon a time kept the light on.

"Scream 2" (1997) ☆☆☆

I liked "Scream 2" as well, and since I couldn't remember much about it I jolted once or twice. The movie pushed the killer-in-the-closet/on-the-loose high jinks further, stretching the believability, but it never spoiled it for me. Just as good as #1, with another scene opener that equaled in suspense and originality, again killing off a well-known actress, even as, this time around, it was anticipated.

And what I liked more about this sequel, "Scream 2" was more personable: a sweet little scene with Derek (Jerry O'Connell) dancing atop dining hall tables to "I Think I Love You" for Sidney. And a couple of good scary moments involving a theater rehearsal dance and Randy on phone with Ghostface, out in the open in daylight, as Dewey and Gail search for the madman, were nifty fright set-pieces. And the latter had a good shocker. Even having a lesser known Liev Schrieber back in the game, really good here as quiet, but attention-hungry Cotton Weary, was something I didn't expect to see. Well, you need interesting suspects, right?

What I liked less? Why couldn't we go back to Woodsboro? 

"Scream 3" (2000) ☆☆ 1/2

The third film was over-written, and for some of the cast over-acted, and it really pushed the plausibly. I couldn't buy a lot of what the killer was doing, and even the mystery this time around, with Ghostface's identity, became too far-fetched for me in this installment. Maybe because series writer Kevin Williamson was replaced by Ehren Kruger (of this summers other third installment, "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."), who didn't have the same wit and dialogue.

"Scream 3" was weaker, maybe too thought-out and plot-heavy, and the scares were either smaller or sillier. What probably killed it for me: Why Hollywood? I still prefer Woodsboro. Woodsboro is simpler. 

It's still kind-of fun. See it with you friends. It's a good enough time. 

Sci-Fi Thriller Overrated, but "Source Code" Is Still A Speeding Metra Train Of Entertainment

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan have a moment
before their reality explodes around them

"Source Code" ☆☆☆

"Source Code" has a lot of critics going bananas. It's the new science-fiction thriller from Duncan Jones, director of '09's also hugely praised "Moon," (Hey, fun fact, he's David Bowie's kid!). Jones is a first-time director, so starting off he made a pretty ambitious movie for a modest price, the space mystery "Moon" with Sam Rockwell playing a lone astronaut mining energy for earth. By himself, with only a computer voice as a friend, he eventually goes out on a dig and finds something out of the ordinary, another person. The kicker: It looks like him. It is him. He either has to figure out the puzzle or uncover what could be the initial workings of his own insanity. 

Those critics liked the sophisticated genius of "Moon," and now like the clever, fast-moving premise of "Source Code,' about a man who wakes in another man's body, on a commuter train heading to Chicago. It's him. But it isn't him. He tries to determine what his situation is, but all he gets out is what he is told, repeatedly, again and again, by people on a monitor he doesn't know, that he's on a mission he didn't enact, to relive the last 8 minutes of this guy's life so he can find a terrorist who blew up the train, before the madman strikes again and causes post-9/11 chaos on downtown Chicago. Go back, again and again, until he finds the bomb, tracks down it's maker. The kicker here: He has 8 minutes every time, before the clock runs out and the bomb detonates. "Groundhog's Day"-style, he forgoes the same events until he gets it right, or until he becomes wise enough to know what's really going on. 

Is this really a mission, or is he losing his head, too?

Pretty ingenious high-concept sci-fi idea to me. Except I didn't go nuts over the trailers.

Although I don't think the huge reception isn't far-fetched itself. All reviewers (about 90% on RottenTomatoes) praise the film for that intriguing premise, and that it's smartly written (by Ben Ripley), aptly directed by Jones, has a good cast that includes Jake Gyllenhall and Michelle Monaghan, and is, as everyone states totally, entertaining as hell. I agree. "Source Code" has a smart script, a director who after a near-success with one gets the sci-fi form right here, a personable cast, and the movie's strength of rapid pacing. You would have to, I think. There are 8 minutes every time (and I do think the sequences were that long). Wouldn't it seem logical to push each scene, one after the next, with the colder truth intervals in reality, to move as quick as to keep upping the suspense as it does very well Jones, and his editors, too, got that down by not making this movie a sleeper, a turn-your-head-away-sigh or glance-at-your-watch-routine even as our hero does it throughout the show. But you don't. The movie is never boring. It moves along like a commuter train and never lets up, never gets dull, even for a second. 

Still...

I think a lot of reviewers were too taken with it. They too loved that idea, too loved that pace, and were too excited about it and readily accepted the movie as another terrific modern sci-fi mind-boggler masterpiece after last summer's smash "Inception" who, like I, indulgently ate up. But for "Source Code," I just don't think so. Like "Moon," a movie I wanted to like but really didn't, I felt the critics were too smitten. "Source Code" is overrated. 

But ah, what am I saying, anyway? The movie is indeed good entertainment, and for only 90 minutes I don't think your hedging your bets on seeing longer, or far worse, fares (and there are). Thinking of "Inception," a sci-fi extravaganza that still managed to kill me after 2, and more, viewings, was really as smart, exciting, beguiling, and had better twists and characters, as all critics and audiences have deemed it as. But "Code" isn't as smart, or as stylishly clever, or even as ambitious, as Chris Nolan's "Inception," and even as most to all critics don't mind that the science and logic, and some with the ending, to "Source Code" doesn't make much sense (neither did "Inception"), they forgive it because it makes sense enough. It does for me to, also, but only because, just like everyone else, of really how very entertaining the movie was and continued to be... 

We start, after some Hitchcockian opening credits on the Chicago skyline and a swiveling birds-eye view over a specific moving commuter train, that we wake up with a man on that train. He wakes, but seems confused, even wondering as to how he got there. He sits across from a smiling woman, who talks to him like a friend, and addresses him as Sean. This Sean glances small happenings (spilled coffee, soda can snapping/fizzing open), discontent fellow passengers, and gets his ticket punched, found by this nice, smiling girl in his breast pocket. It all is, and should be, very normal occurrences for Sean.

But Sean is wigging out. He says his name is Cap. Colter Stevens of the US Air Force. We, with this smiling, now nervously smiling woman, begin to think he's got some motion sickness. Soon enough though he retreats to a john where he views himself in the mirror - to see that it's not him! It's someone else!

What the hell! Are we crazy too?

He comes out, the woman is there, worried, scared, still calls him Sean. But he isn't Sean. 

We now know something isn't right. It's far from just odd, weird or off. It's a nightmare. 

But only until the car combusts and licks with flame and derails on the street. The train has exploded!...

This same man wakes again, but now is in a dark cell like containment, strapped in, sweating, depleted and now is completely freaked out. Voices, and soon people on a monitor, ask him in cold tones if he found the bomb, and has succeeded his mission. 

What? What bomb? What mission? 

Things clear up now. His real name is indeed Stevens, really of the US Air Force, and the last thing he remembers is his copter being shot down in Afghanistan, then waking up on that train to Chicago, and now here. He, or we, don't get enough answers before we are sent, sent!, back to that train again, informed we have 8 minutes to find the bomb before it explodes again. Before it explodes again!

The same sudden wake up. The same silly instances. The same confiding woman. 

Do we still know what the hell is going on?

We don't. We are only sure of one thing. Find a bomb, the guy responsible for it, and everything will be right again.

But don't forget the kicker:

Because, you see, there are 8 minutes. Colter has just 8 minutes before he wakes again in his cold containment space and is sent back to wake again on a bright, sunny spring Chicago day across from the bright, sunny, pretty woman. He has eight minutes, and the train goes boom...

Sadly, these first fifteen minutes or so is the most interesting the movie gets, because of what little Colter knows, of what little we know, that once things begin to make sense (somewhat) and we figure out the culprits, it really doesn't surprise us all that much. I'll admit a number of the film's twists and revelations I saw coming (who the bomber was, what the payoff ending was going to be, the truth about Colter's mind and body), and by the time it ended, with this ending I predicted, I was hoping for more. And there was (that last got-ya! ending that I, nor anyone it seems, still don't get). Anyway, the last thirty minutes were a wasted opportunity. I would have liked "Source Code" more had Jones and Ripley really hammered the dilemma and took our hearts away when we knew of Colter's and Christina's fate. I liked it, but I wanted it to wow me. It just didn't.

A couple other things about how smart and compelling Ripley's script could have been. The mystery, of uncovering the bomb and finding the bomber, wasn't satisfying enough. The sort-of detective track-down with Colter was the bulk of the movie, and didn't get my interest when most of the colorful train passengers I expected weren't at all the bomber when Jones and Ripley make them seem more like victims then perpetrators when Colter, a smart and physical man of means, goes all Air Force crazy on them by beating them up (I like his character, in such a situation as this, has a bit of a temper), and dumping their luggage all over the place. I wanted more mystery, more twists, and more interesting suspects. 

Also, a technique some writers do and what I think should have been done here, is we should have never gone outside the train, or at least waited to, when Colter might have become to mad, to sick, that it would be a relief, and a sure surprise, when we did get off that train. And I was hoping, another wasted idea, is when Colter tries to get off, as he does several times, he gets stretched and twisted and torn and destroyed until he wakes again, because he left the boundary of the code.

Well, it is another reality, a parallel world as it is described. 

The characters: Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright, and Michelle Monaghan have pretty weak characters, and aren't too interesting themselves. They were really well-played - Monaghan's smiling, somewhat creepy happy love interest, Farmiga's steely, unsmiling, but warm woman on the monitor, and Wright's stonewall, cold-blooded commander - but could have had some more history, more past, more present conflicts. We get some (Colter and Farmiga'a Goodwin talk relationships, and we know Christina has a jerk of a former boyfriend), but really, not enough. 

Lastly, I've ridden the Chicago trains, in reality the Metra Rail, here the made-up CCR, Chicago Commuter Rail, and have ridden it for 2 years (while commuting to and from school downtown) and can tell you that "Source Code's" train cars are entirely science fiction, and isn't as polished as it seems in the movie. There are no automatic lavatory doors that you can push a button and it's opens for you, you still have to turn and pull like any other door. There are no LCP monitors displaying the current weather. And there are no Dunkin' Donuts! Man, I wish!

Well, it is a movie. And it is science-fiction. 

Exciting as probably any sci-fi film since "Inception," but "Source Code" is no "Inception."