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Type of film: Horror/Mystery
Running time: 110 minutes
Age restriction: Adults only
Reviewed By Prof Joel White
I’ll say it right at the beginning: I left the cinema, after seeing “Scre4m”, fully disgusted. Not at all incidental: the producer and the director were one and the same, Wes Craven.
Since it’s the producer who puts up the money, the director of a film has at least this one brake on where his fancy leads him. In this case, there was no one to say, “You’ve gone too far.”
There’s another, even more vital reason that Wes Craven, the director, would feel no restraining hand: the current film, here under review, is the fourth in the monetarily successful series. To my knowledge the previous three have never been shown in Harare.
The setting for the film is a small town in central United States, in the State of Michigan. Most of the characters are the teenage students of Woodsboro High School.
Several years earlier, the students who are now seniors had produced for the state a ghost story play, which they named “Stab 7.” Not shown to use in the current film there remained for the students, now seniors, the memory of the tragedy in which one of the girls had been stabbed to death by a ghostly enshrouded and never identified knife wielder.
The memory and lugubrious feelings of that earlier period are fully resuscitated during the less-than-a-week which is the passage of time in the film “Scre4m”.
The film is a product of the current year with end of the film mention made that two of the young actors have since died.
An additional reason the viewing of this film has left a sour taste. Further is the foulest language emanating from the mouths of the students, parents and teachers. Worse than anything yet experienced and a worrisome harbinger of what is yet to come.
Odd as it may seem, it is the memory of that four years ago stabbing to death of one of the girls that now creates the impetus to produce a “ghost- play.” The current film covers in more detail than this reviewer would have liked the six stabbing murders that take place on the one evening.
Much of this is seen through the eyes of the local sheriff, Dewey Aley, and his (gorgenous) deputy, Judy.
Having full warnings and details of upcoming assassinations, the law enforcers are always . . . elsewhere.
This includes two “comedy cops whose roles were portrayed by seasoned comics.
It should be noted that the use of the cellphone by the characters was so all-pervasive that by rights it should have been mentioned in the credits.
This film should be given a miss.
Online Reporter