subject: Scream 4 to Rejuvenate Horror Industry? [print this page] Scream 4 to Rejuvenate Horror Industry? Scream 4 to Rejuvenate Horror Industry?
Did you really think it was over, Sidney? Perhaps - but the announcement of Scream 4 has gotten horror fans all aquiver as they are faced with the prospect of the famous threesome - Sidney Prescott, Gale Weathers and Deputy Dewey Riley - all getting back together for another good scare.
Announced under the tagline "New Decade, New Rules", Scream 4 promises to be another slice and dice slashfest which also takes its time to step back and analyse and satirise the horror industry, a move that put initial flick Scream on the map back in 1996 when its mixture of slick horror and witty satire shot it into box office fame. Armed with a smart script and cutting sense of humour, Scream achieved notoriety as a film that both fulfilled its duties as a classic horror film while also parodying the very devices that made it such a good flick. Scream not only explained the rules of horror, but it both broke them and adhered to them strictly in what is now being viewed as a postmodern take on horror of the utmost sophistication.
It didn't end there. After the success of Scream, a sequel, Scream 2, came out and delivered more of the witty comedy that viewers had enjoyed in the first instalment, but with even more surprises, shock, blood and gore. Those are, after all, the rules - but what happens when it's been a full ten years since one franchise ends and is picked up again? Following Scream 3, where we were led to believe poor protagonist Sidney's ordeal truly was over, there was a flux of films during the 2000s which took the world of horror in a completely different direction. Inspired by the innovative Saw, several more movies took on its template and, before long, the industry was flooded with films that were dubbed 'torture porns': graphic examinations of violence with barely any plot whose purpose merely seemed to be to induce sickness in the viewer. It was a long cry from Scream's slick and subversive scripts - but, since Scream's very core centres around the horror that precedes it, what will 2011's Scream 4 have in store when the previous decade has included nothing but gruesome torture and not much else?
You might not be able to find out now, but you can surely catch up on the story so far by catching the original trilogy on Sky HD packages while you wait!
