Scream 3

At the finale, a door opens of its own volition to suggest there may yet be a fourth slice of this cult American teen terror series. Yet Wes Craven should firmly slam shut that door: the Scream franchise was always planned to be a trilogy; Scream innovator Kevin Williamson had already handed over the screenplay baton to Ehren Kruger for the third instalment, and it would be impossible for the increasingly gothic Courtney Cox Arquette to come up with a more horrendous haircut than the jagged-edge Carrie Fisher meets Morticia Addams look she parades here.

The original Scream was an unknown quantity: a knowing parody of the Roger Corman school of trashy slasher movie, filled with cynicism, irony and teenage pouting, petulant pulchritude, and it was scary too.

The self-referential Scream 3 suffers the curse of the third instalment: by now Scream is a totally known quantity; the characters are in a well-worn groove; the original inspiration has dried up and, not without irony, the series is now without irony, formerly its trump card. Instead, in-jokes are in, and frankly smug in-jokes should be out.

The series has to become ever more convoluted, and sure enough Scream 3 is a movie within a movie with references to two earlier movies. And so, Courtney Cox Arquette's TV reporter Gale Weathers has to watch absurdly pushy Jennifer Jolie (American indie queen Parker Posey) play her unscrupulous superbitch character to the B-movie method maximum in Stab 3: Return To Woodsboro, the Hollywood re-creation of the serial killings in Scream and Scream 2.

Likewise, David Arquette (Cox's husband, hence her name change) returns as deputy Dewey, now consigned to the role of technical advisor on the Stab 3 lot. Completing the comeback trio (everything is done in threes in Scream 3), Neve Campbell's ever-threatened Sidney Prescott must confront the Scream-masked slasher once more when it becomes apparent he is killing the Stab 3 cast in the very order in which their characters died previously.

First to make an exit is Jenny McCarthy, amusingly over-playing a blonde bimbo by the name of Sarah Darling, who complains of being a 35 year old being forced to play a 21 year old with only two scenes. Naturally, she lasts only two scenes, but new writer Kruger fails to sustain this humour, while Craven's maze of alternate realities is proficiently constructed but devoid of spooks and surprise twists, and the regular cast act as if they have seen it all before...which they have of course.

Scream 3 becomes the very movie the series first set out to parody, and no, that is not the ultimate joke played by Craven.

Charles Hutchinson

28/04/00