Scream 4? Say it ain’t so.

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The Weinstein Company’s Dimension Films is moving ahead with the long-rumored Scream 4, at least enough to mention it in a major press announcement. 

You hear that noise.  It’s my heart breaking.  

This one is personal for me.  While I wasn’t old enough to see Scream in the theaters when it was released in 1996, but I did watch it over 100 times (that is no exaggeration) when it came out on video and pay-per-view. Scream, for me, put everything I knew about movies at the age of 14 into a smartly-written thriller. Horror introduced me to movies. Scream introduced me to film.

That’s odd to say, but the characters’ conversations discussing narrative conventions of the horror genre fascinated me.  It turned me onto Silence of the Lambs, a movie I remember seeing advertised but wasn’t allowed to see. (I was 8 when it came out.)  With Silence of the Lambs, which is still one of my favorite films, I discovered what a great movie was.  From there, I was hooked.  Hitchcock, Scorsese, Bergman, Godard, Jarman, Hawks, Bertolucci, Coppola, Capra, Welles. These are names I wouldn’t know without first being obsessed with Scream.

Scream 3 proved that the franchise wasn’t worth anything without the savvy discussion of pop film.  I didn’t hate Scream 3, but I knew that the party was over without Kevin Williamson.  Scream 4 will be nothing more than self-mockery.

It’s not surprising, really, considering Dimension and the Weinsteins’ bad management of the Halloween franchise.  But more than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, more than the upcoming Robocop remake, more than the Halloween remake, the idea of Scream 4 hurts.

People will see Scream 4, no doubt.  Some will even like it.  But in the words of Scream‘s Randy Meeks, “There’s no accounting for taste.”  I’ll stick with the my movies.  You can have Scream 4.