“What’s your favorite scary movie?”
Didn’t we all miss this infamous question and the grave voice it is pronounced with?
After 10 years since the last installment, director Wes Craven and the original cast come back to reboot the franchise and give it a fresh restart. Sidney (Neve Campbell) is now a well known author and goes back to Woodsboro for the 10th anniversary of the tragic killings and to promote her book. It does not take long for a new series of murders to happen, and for Dewey (David Arquette), Gale (Courtney Cox) and the new generation of teenagers – who look way older than high schoolers – to help finding the killer.
SCRE4M is fun and entertaining, from the original intro to the solid ending through numerous effective slashing killings – only two of which with a bullet and the rest by stabbing. The plot revolves around the previous chapters and the same old situations, with a few upgrades – this time the deaths are recorded and exposed on the web – but the script never skitters off the friendly turf, and even though it is never to be taken seriously it occasionally manages to startle. The references and jokes about remakes, reboots and horror clichés are everywhere, as well as good one-liners and direct punches to the shallowness of limelight that characterizes most so-called celebrities today.
SCRE4M ends up being quite violent and thrilling, and even if you know all the way what to expect, let’s give credit to Wes Craven for the good effort. And most of all, to say it with Sidney’s words, he did not forget the first rule of remakes: don’t f**k with the original!
