Throw another insipid power ballad onto the CD player its time for Scream 3. Where were we? Well, in the words of Craig David, allow me to fill you in. Scream was the horror movie sensation of 1996, setting itself up as the ultimate in self-referential knowingness and delivering plenty of Wes Cravens trademark shocks along the way. Scream 2, released a year later, also contained its fair share of frighteners, but was a major let-down on practically every other front. Now, climbing yet another couple of rungs down the quality ladder, weve got Scream 3, a pile of steaming plopsy if ever there was one.
Sure, Neve Campbell for some reason signed up to complete the trilogy. So too did fellow go-the-distancers Courteney Cox and David Arquette. But dear oh dear, they must have been hanging their Hollywood heads in shame after wrapping up this hokum. Or if they werent, they should have been.
The flick takes place on the set of the made-up movie Stab 3, where a bloke in a strangely-familiar ghost mask is making a nuisance of himself by running around murdering members of the cast and crew. So our three franchise survivors, like the do-gooders they are, try to use their past gruesome experiences to help catch the killer but before you can say none of this even makes any sense, theyre on the top of his hit list. And thats hit with a capital S.
Wes Craven knows good and well how to shock an audience using his trusty well-worn catalogue of generic conventions, so I can only assume it was actually his Newsround-presenting brother John who really helmed this one. Theres not a single genuine scare to be had for the entire lacklustre 116 minutes, the cast all look like theyd rather be elsewhere (particularly Campbell, who doesnt even ATTEMPT one of her token forced facial expressions this time round), and the gaping stab wounds left by the slasher are never any match for the giant holes in the plot. Scream 3 isnt even fit to mop up the original movies mess.