Fourth film is so unoriginal you could 'Scream'

Scream 4 may not be the scariest film this year, but it's certainly the most self-referential.

The modern homage it pays to its predecessors turns out to be the best thing about the film. Unfortunately, that accounts for only the first 20 minutes.

The movie-within-a-movie concept is twistier than usual, including a surprisingly comical cameo with Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin.

Writer Kevin Williamson skewers the horror genre with snarky wit. But it's hard to sustain that cheeky meta humor, and the film seems to just give in and join its slasher brethren, devolving into a string of gruesome, but unoriginal, slayings.

The story is pinned to Sidney (Neve Campbell), the lone survivor of a series of grisly murders. She returns, after many years, to Woodsboro, the small town where Ghostface (inspired, of course, by Edvard Munch's famous The Scream painting) went on killing sprees. She shows up on the anniversary of the killings to plug her new book.

Denizens of the town include inept cop Dewey (David Arquette), who's married to has-been journalist Gale (Courteney Cox), which adds another level of art imitating life. His none-too-sharp law enforcer is meant to be funny, but the laughs never come.

But they're just the first generation of Scream-ers. This incarnation is focused on Sidney's niece Jill (Emma Roberts) and her pals, high school babes played by Hayden Panettiere and Marielle Jaffe, who are lusted after by fellow classmates and movie geeks played by Rory Culkin and Erik Knudsen. Of that group, Panettiere gives the liveliest performance. Campbell, whose character is meant to have found some peace in her life after all the turmoil, comes off bland and one-note.

The reboot, directed by horror veteran Wes Craven, has an auspicious start that doesn't pan out. Maybe, as the movie jokingly implies, we've all grown jaded. After all, it has been 11 years since Scream 3, and many horror movies have hit screens in the intervening years.

Though there is a moderately clever twist involved, by the time it's revealed, after the mind-numbing bloodshed, it's hard to really care.

The movie works better in its wink-wink mockery of the franchise than in its satire of teens and their tech- and media-driven lives. References to social networking, texting and viral videos come off as if grown-ups are shaking their heads over the antics of those crazy whippersnappers.

The filmmakers' subtext — at least in the movie's first quarter — seems to acknowledge that you can't top the original. And they didn't.