When the fourth instalment of the ‘Scream’ franchise was announced and later released, there was a sense of critical apathy to the film. Taking on the horror landscape of the late 2000s and early 2010s, what we got was a slasher film that attempted to take on the torture porn that had become popular. What resulted was a film aesthetically bloodier, but still very in line with the franchise as a whole.
Well, except for Jill.
Portrayed by actress Emma Roberts, the creatively named Jill Roberts is an every-girl. She’s not as showy as her girlfriends, or as strange as her boyfriends. There’s nothing particularly…interesting about her. Except her aunt. With her connection to Sidney Prescott, Jill has a link to the world of celebrity.
If you’re reading this, you know that Jill is the central antagonist of ‘Scream 4’. Playing with the fame-obsessed, disaffected teenager trope, Wes Craven takes the standard Ghostface plan and twists it. She won’t be the successful killer – she’s the final girl. Kind of.
In context of the other films in this franchise, it’s a brilliant twist. The first two films featured killers whose plan was to leverage the moral panic surrounding horror as a genre to set them free, and the third as basically uninterested in the outcome. ‘Scream 4’, by contrast, is built around the twist. While Sidney remains the ostensible main character, the film is really about Jill.
That brings me to an issue.
I’ve touched on the central themes of media and family in previous instalments of SCRARCH, but something I haven’t really spoken to is the legacy and history aspect. Maureen Prescott dies by the hands of her lover’s son, who is egged on by her own son, who is the result of her abusive time in Hollywood. Sidney is haunted by her death, and eventually kills her brother in a full circle moment, leaving her alone. Gale’s reporting in Cotton’s trial over Maureen’s death leads to the films that bring it all back. Everything in the first three movies is cyclical. By the fourth, we’re returning to the start, and the slate is essentially wiped clean. Except for Jill, apparently.
People either love or hate ‘Scream 4’, so let me throw my hat in the ring as a neutral party. If the most recent film in this franchise falters in that it cares too much to touch the legacy in any meaningful capacity, the fourth film is obsessed with it. Jill wants so badly to be Sidney in a distinctly millennial, vapid way. She’s played by goddamn Emma Roberts for a reason.
But the result of this is a film that feels extremely cold in a franchise that’s all warmth and heat. Passion leads these killers, and the murder is rarely in cold blood. Yes, it may be calculated, but there’s always someone at a boil at all moments, usually through their familial ties. But even prior to the reveal, Jill isn’t playing this with any discernible fire. Her friendships lack cohesion and affection. She’s callous – only getting reckless when she knows she’s about to lose.
The scene where she systematically stages her own near-death scene is probably the strongest in the film, and maybe in the series as a whole, post-original. Wes Craven stages it not so much in horror, or even comedy, as these films so often go for. This is a step-by-step guide. Ramming into the knife. Tearing out a chunk of hair, far enough back to not spoil photos. Throwing herself into a glass table. It’s all set out like a recipe.
So much of the film feels like this. When Charlie and Robbie explain the rules of 2010s horror (quite poorly, might I add), they’re not speaking from the same place as Randy did in 1996. There’s no reverence for the genre as a whole, and the implication is more that they’re interested in how they fit into it. Robbie later attempts to save himself by proclaiming that, as a gay man, he’s meant to be exempt from death. It’s a truly odd scene in the film, but telling for how Craven and screenwriting Kevin Williamson were viewing teens in the 2000s. Sidney and friends may have been ironic and sarcastic, but there was sincerity there. That is, by all metrics, gone.
When we see Olivia’s mangled, bloody corpse, it’s meant to be a reflection of the “torture porn” Craven clearly has little use for outside of this one shocker moment. But reflected on the film as a whole, the death of Olivia feels…oddly empty. It’s not just a consequence of her being obvious cannon fodder, but how the film presents its younger cast. Olivia gets about the same amount of time as someone like Cici in the second film, but Williamson does little to give her anything particularly special. The leering of Anthony Anderson as she walks into her home incapsulates how the film sees her.
A pretty obstacle until we get to the point of these films – that big ole famous Sidney Prescott.
That’s what I don’t like here. After allowing Ehren Kruger to bring a different kind of warmth to the third film, ‘Scream 4’ is cold and brutal. That’s clearly intentional, but it stands out in a bad way, particularly as the new films walk a new path that feels independent of what is going on here. By attempting to embrace what horror was in 2011, Craven produced something distinct from his filmography. For some, that meant new and exciting. But it’s just too…mean for me.