Scream 3 (2000)

★★
The below review was written in 2000. After my rewatch, I looked at this review and decided to repost it and not write an update, since it largely explains my current feelings about the movie.

The first two Scream movies were all about being self-aware. They knew the conventions of horror movies and poked fun at them too. What they didn't do was fall victim to them. Scream 3, on the other hand, is a by-the-numbers slasher flick that offers a few chuckles but otherwise doesn't have anything new to say. Even with the same director and the main actors of the series returning, Scream 3 falls short of expectations. Maybe that's because Kevin Williamson didn't write this installment. Ehren Kruger (any relation to Freddy?) has the screenwriting credit. Williamson does have a producer credit, though I have to wonder how much he was involved with the production, because this entry isn't as fresh as the first two.

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has gone into hiding and now handles calls for a crisis center. She lives in a home in the countryside and changed her name. This might be a reference to Halloween: H20, which had Jamie Lee Curtis changing her name and going into hiding after a series of murders in her hometown. Sidney doesn't get very much screen time at all during the first half. Instead, Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox Arquette) are investigating a series of murders on the set of Stab 3. The murders are happening in the order that they happen in the screenplay, but since there were three different scripts, no one knows who the third victim will be. This shuts down production of the movie and Parker Posey (as the actress playing Gale in Stab 3) has protection around her home for fear that she could be next.

At each crime scene, a photo of Sidney's mother is left behind. Much of the movie alternates between killings and investigating the photos to see what the connection is. The movie makes the investigation scenes interesting, but all the murder sequences are accompanied by cheap scares and false alarms. Eventually, Sidney comes out of hiding, which leads to all the characters stuck in a big mansion while being stalked by the killer. Before that happens, Sidney, Dewey and Gale watch a videotape made by Randy (Jamie Kennedy), who was killed in Scream 2. He provides the rules of a trilogy, which includes the fact that the main character can die. Other than this, Scream 3 doesn't try anything inventive.

There are some nice touches along the way. I don't think I've ever seen so many characters in a movie carry a cellular phone (see note 1), but here, nearly everyone has one. I started laughing every time someone pulled one out. There's a cameo by Roger Corman, though it's doubtful that the target audience will know who he is. There's another cameo by Carrie Fisher, as a secretary who looks like Carrie Fisher and complains that she didn't get the part of Princess Leia because she wouldn't sleep with George Lucas. There's another amusing cameo by Jay and Silent Bob. Did the filmmakers decide to use these cameos because they sensed their material wasn't so good? The movie is only slightly better than Urban Legend (1998) but not as good as I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), because one expects more from Scream 3.

Members of the Online Film Critics Society were banned from press screenings, fearing that critics would give the ending away. I don't recall any reviews giving away the ending to the first two films, so I don't see why O.F.C.S. critics were banned. The killer, once revealed, is a huge disappointment anyway, because he's not someone that we ever cared about during the movie. When Randy discusses the rules of the trilogy, he doesn't mention the fact that there is sometimes a fourth film anyway. The Alien series and Phantasm series are examples. Now that the Scream series is beginning to run out of steam, I hope there isn't a fourth film (see note 2).

© 2000 Silver Screen Reviews

Note: (1) In 2000, cell phones were not as ubiquitous as they are now, so seeing so many phones onscreen was new, at least for me it was. (2) A pretty good fourth installment was released in 2011.