Scream 3 [Blu-ray]

After surviving the second wave of ghostface killings, Sidney Prescott has retired to the mountains to live in peace and work as a phone call therapist. Sadly for her she is about to be dragged back into the nightmare because the production of Stab 3 is rocked by murder and the killer is leaving pictures of Sidney's dead mother at the crime scenes.

I have to admit that I once never gave this film much love, I loved the first two to such a degree that I felt this third and final instalment was way off being a fitting closure to the trilogy. Yet as time has wore on I have really grown fond of the film, Parker Posey no longer annoys the hell out of me, the once jarring itch of watching the makers kill off a fave character of mine in the opening sequence is something I now view as a masterstroke, and the twisty ending that was once an irksome pest has moved on to be the perfect trilogy closure.

Scream 3 has its tongue firmly in its cheek, it's aware of its number and it's aware of its formulaic root, so in spite of treading familiar ground (I mean come on gang, have you not learnt nothing from your previous experiences), the returning characters still have our undivided attention. While the transporting of the story to Hollywood, with its movie within a movie structure, is fresh and adds a new dimension to proceedings. New additions to the scary fun are Patrick Dempsey, Emily Mortimer, Lance Henriksen and the afore mentioned Parker Posey, and all of them add greatly to the mysterious plot unfolding. The death quotient is still high, and the Wes Craven school of whodunitry is well and truly open, and I personally feel that this one is easily the funniest film of the three, witness Jay & Silent Bob turning up, a Carrie Fisher sequence that once heard will never be forgotten, and a video appearance by passed on geek god Randy Meeks. Scream 3 closes the trilogy just fine, it's got bags of energy and a glint in its eye, now if only I could get a copy of the uncompleted Stab 3 off the internet...

7/10

The 3rd of a trilogy (well now 4 movies) but a trilogy when it was made, Not as great as 1 and 2 but what squeals are? Part of a great set of movies though

After the excellent Scream & the generally fantastic Scream 2, Scream 3 had a lot to live up to. Firstly it would've needed to have been able to come up with witty gags focused on other horror films that would entertain a large part of its audience. Films like 'Halloween' or 'Nightmare on Elm Street' were well known to the crowds but the gags had been done to death wheras films like 'Slaughterhouse' who's heard of that late 1980's classic?

Anyway, not only was the script weaker than its predaccessors but not one of the victims were likable except Tyson who only has about 5 minutes screentime. I just found that 95% of the characters were not relatable in any way. The attempts at making the characters humourous and flamboyoant in a Hollywood sense begin to grate after about 45 minutes. The characters are that obnoxious that it's hard to care for many of them when they die.
On top of this the character who turns out to be Ghostface didn't suprise me at all as the character's behaviour was always notably and emotionally tense and aggressive. However the climax is not as effective as Scream 2.

That's not to say it's a terrible film. It's not. After all it had the perfect premise for a 'Scream' film. Sydney visits the Cast and Crew on the set of 'Stab 3' just when Ghostface arrives. It's just its a shame the humour was written poorly.