Scream 4 Review

As probably the world's biggest Scream fan, needless to say, I was anxious for Scream 4 to come out. I certainly had my reservations; it has been 10 years since the last film, horror films don't exactly have the best rep for sequels, trilogies, etc., and the fact there was an entirely new breed of cast members. However, I knew Wes Craven was directing, and the most important characters would be present: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courtney Cox Arquette. The originial Scream film is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, movies. The second one was just as great without cheapening the original (in my opinion) and the third, although unlike Craven's style, was original and kept me guessing until the end.

After seeing the movie, I don't think I had a strong negative or positive attitude about it - I really was torn. I loved the beginning scenes, the spoof on horror movies (I won't go into too much detail for those who haven't seen it) and the characters were well developed. I'm not a fan of Hayden Panettiere, but I was actually impressed with her in this movie! The ending was pretty lame, and the whole play on motives they did to try and relate back to the first film was sort of cheesy. The killing scenes weren't nearly as gory as the first three, and the "jumpy" factor was lacking as well.

All in all, though, I have to give props to Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson and all my Scream cast originals for making a fourth installment. It's definitely my least favorite of all four films, but I won't complain about getting to relive the excitement of seeing a new horror film - especially one that's part of my favorite movie series.

King's, On Writing

While reading Stephen King’s On Writing, I immediately related to the first few chapters where King describes his “childhood” attempts at writing. In one chapter, he describes a nail that starts to fall off the wall resulting from too many rejection slips hanging on the door; all throughout elementary school I tried week after week to get one of my short fiction stories posted in the school’s paper but failed week on end.

According to King, in order to be a successful writer, you must read a lot and write a lot. Why wasn’t I getting published in West Freehold’s newspaper then?! I read constantly; mostly Judy Blume…but read, nonetheless! I also loved to write and did so each day during school and night before bed. Perhaps my fiction stories filled with serial killers and bloody guts spewing out everywhere was a little too graphic for my fellow seven-year-olds. I guess I can thank my older sister persuading me to watch Scream and Terminator 2.

            

I should try and find those short fiction stories and submit them to King; who knows, they could be the next installment of It !