Scream 3 (2000) Review

Scream 3 (2000) Review

Almost without fail, slasher franchises succumb to diminishing returns. Even the best of them do. What you need to know up front about Scream 3 is, this is definitely the worst of the Scream movies, but it isn’t all bad.    

The story starts out with Cotton Weary, now a famous TV host, being murdered by the Ghostface killer. Who is the killer this time? Gale Weathers and Dewey are on the case again; this time they’re led to the set of Stab 3, where Dewey is a consultant on the film, and dating the actress who plays Gale. Awkward. Sidney is living a quiet existence as a counsellor for a teen help line with a fake name and little contact with the outside world, but she’s pulled into the drama once again after one of Stab 3’s actresses is killed, and the production is shut down for the investigation. 

The two main problems I have with Scream 3 is the choice of setting for the story, and the reduction of Sidney’s role in said story. Sidney is the character who drove the first two movies, but in 3, there are large portions of the film where she isn’t present, despite the story still trying to hinge on her importance. There is a lot more time devoted to Gale and Dewey, who are annoying once again, but made even more annoying by the actress playing Gale constantly tagging along. She is unbearable at times, and is one example of a sin the previous movies didn’t commit: making characters unlikable to the point where the audience wants to see them killed. 

The setting being a Hollywood film set takes the meta narrative to a new level of meta that, for me, is just too far in the wrong direction. I like how they skipped over showing us Stab 2 and went straight to Stab 3, just so they could have even more trilogy clichés addressed. Only problem is, they didn’t comment on how the third one is never that good. The scene when Jenny McCarthy’s character is reading lines over the phone with the director and it turns into the usual killer-taunting-the-victim-on-the-phone cliché is just so predictable and stale. And that’s how a lot of this movie comes off: we’ve seen this sort of thing before, only done better. They go as far as to blow up a house at one point to make it seem scarier! But it doesn’t work. 

I’ll give credit where credit’s due: Scream 3 does do some things right. The way a certain fan favourite character is brought back at one point is pretty clever and satisfying, and is easily my favourite part of the whole movie. There’s a part where Sidney is chased through the film set of her Woodsboro home, and there a couple clever moments with the unpredictability of the set design, and some interesting camera moves. I credit all of these positives to director Wes Craven, who still makes the most of the sub-par script. Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two movies, didn’t write this one, it was written by Ehren Kruger, who wrote all of the Transformers sequels. Honestly, I’m surprised Scream 3 wasn’t worse, with that guy writing it. 

I won’t ruin the twist at the end, but I have to address it. First off, I don’t think the movie needed a twist, but this is Scream, so everything has to be connected, character-wise. The reveal doesn’t feel as genuinely shocking and plausible as the one from Scream 2, and of course is nothing compared to the original, but I don’t hate it. The first time I saw it, I was still genuinely surprised. It lacks the necessary setup throughout to truly pay off, but it isn’t completely dumb, either. 

Behind-the-scenes (like, actually behind-the-scenes of the real movie), there were troubles with the film’s development, what with the Columbine High School Massacre having just occurred, and concerns that films of this nature were partly to blame. The studio had the violence toned down, which is extremely obvious, given how underwhelming the death scenes are, and the overall change of focus from actual horror to dumb humour and jokes is disappointing, but if the latter is what you really liked about the previous movies, maybe there’s more to like about this one. 

It’s also a bit uncomfortable to watch nowadays, because Lance Henriksen plays a film producer who, as we find out later in the movie, forced actresses to have to sex with him back in the day so they would get good parts, which we now know was really going on all along in real life with Harvey Weinstein. Scream 3 was distributed by Dimension Films, which was owned by The Weinstein Company at that time.  

Scream 3 begs to be taken as seriously as Scream and Scream 2, but when you have cameos like Carrie Fisher as a secretary with attention drawn to her looking like Carrie Fisher, and Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes as Jay and Silent Bob, I just can’t. It tries to be funnier, but isn’t, it tries to be scarier, but isn’t, and tries to conclude the series on an epic note, but doesn’t. However, I wouldn’t say skip this one entirely. If you really liked the first two, I think it’s still worth watching at least once.