Scream 4 (2011)

Heard the term "reboot?". It’s done to discard continuity or establish a new universe. It sounds like a "remake" but it’s not telling the original’s similar story. It’s working with the audience’s familiarity of the original work. In movies, it’s done to attract new fans to a franchise that has grown stale and work with an established fan base to generate profit.

Before I get sucked into the review, let me just say RIP Wes Craven. I should have mentioned this in my last review but I think it’s really important to acknowledge this mastermind won’t be alive to give us any more adrenaline pumping suspense thrillers like the Scream trilogy (One of my favourite trilogies.) I’d seen Scream 4 a long time back and I enjoyed it but my recent viewing made the minus points brighter than the plus points.

Sidney Prescott has returned to Woodsboro after many years and is launching a book on her experiences of facing off five psychopathic nut-jobs (yeah I would definitely read how girl did that!). Her return sparks a new wave of kills, chills and thrills but this ride is for Sidney’s cousin Jill Roberts and her college circle. Sidney is just supposed to sit and watch people drop dead until the climax reveals her role in this new blood bath. Can Sidney reduce the body count and save the day? Can Gale get another book written from this fiasco? Can Dewey finally prove him useful instead of being tossed around like a rag doll?   

The latest instalment in the Scream franchise is a reboot. My intro explanation should enlighten you on the purpose of this instalment but I can’t guarantee how much it helps you enjoy the movie. See this movie was supposed to be the start of a new trilogy. Kinda been waiting half a decade for the next part to come out.  

See the writing behind the Scream franchise is what I believe is what makes this franchise worth watching whether it’s the awesome f***-word one-liners or the suspense-filled screenplay. So I’ll start of mentioning the writing behind this reboot this movie isn’t a reboot of the franchise; it’s a reboot of the storyline. To make this a reboot of the franchise, you would need things like the younger generation taking over Sidney, Dewey and Gale’s roles. Their struggles. Their banter. More elaborate death scenes. More unpredictable jump scare placements. A shakier suspect list. Also, the characters need enough spunk/sympathy/humour in their personalities for us to even care about them when they’re put in harm’s way.  

Reading these points you would think I know the franchise like the back of my hand. Unfortunately the writer Kevin Williamson wasn’t thinking like me. He did a good job with the first two Scream movies. Unfortunately the writing seems like a half-hearted effort here.

·         Sidney, Dewey and Gale are still the main characters of this franchise which is good except they aren’t at their best because they’re doing the same things they did ten years ago. Dewey and Gale are married. Whoopee! They looked married even when they were arguing in the previous sequels. No big surprise there. Sidney makes some effort to combat the villain with a kick and some quick thinking so I’ll excuse her.

·         The younger generation are ""So Not Interesting"". There’s two Randy Meeks wannabe geeks who combined together... aren’t even half of what Randy was. Randy looked like a guy who actually watched movies. These two look like people who just read about movies off the Internet. There’s the suspicious boyfriend who’s supposed to give the Billy Loomis vibes but comes across as constipated. There’s Sidney’s cousin Jill who carries the lost-and-confused expression even before the killing starts. There’s Jill’s bestie Kirby who was the saving grace for me. She was interesting to watch and gave the much required spunk.

·         The death scenes and the jump scares don’t have the same magic as the trilogy. The trilogy had the protagonists crawling over an unconscious Ghostface in a taxi that crashed, a TV studio where Ghostface haunts the leads, a gas leak explosion and a heart-pounding use of two way mirrors. This movie hardly has any scenes I can put up there with the trilogy’s best scenes. People said this movie was an improvement over Scream 3 but sorry I prefer that movie over this and I’ll apply the same criticism people used for Scream 3 - " has become what it originally spoofed "

Other disadvantages: a lot of characters seem to serve no reason other than body count. Although I couldn’t predict the killer’s reveal and the motive, it didn’t exactly lead to an excitable climax. I’ll give you a clue; a hospital room that’s about the size of your living room. You guys had potential to do a Halloween 2-type climax. The writer had an opportunity to use a subplot of Gale engaging in banter with Deputy Judy Hicks but doesn’t do much with it. The opening sequence was interesting but the second time I saw this movie it was very annoying. It looked gimmicky and felt like an obligation.

On to some plus points, the killer’s reveal and motive was good. The killer’s acting really stands out in the climax. Kirby’s character was good. Sidney was good in her brief face-offs with the killer. The parking lot scene where Ghostface confronts Sidney’s book publicist. The students discussing the rules of the reboot.

This movie is a reboot in the sense that you don’t need to have seen Scream 2 and Scream 3. You just need common knowledge to know Sidney’s life has been screwed over with Ghostface enough times. All the references in this film are directed to the original Scream. The pre-climax had a nod to Scream’s opening sequence.  

I won’t give an overall verdict on if you should see the movie or not. My above rant tells you what to look out for. I believe the Scream trilogy will always be remembered in the horror movie record books for bringing the excitement back into the slasher genre with its focus on suspense rather than gore. Especially the first Scream. Sequels, reboots and remakes can’t prevent the franchise from growing stale but they can do a good job of fucking up the original like Sidney mentions during the movie. Why does she say that? Watch Scream 4 to find out!

Halloween (2018)

Before I get started on reviewing the latest instalment of the Halloween franchise directed by David Gordon Green let me just give some trivia that will help you understand the movie before I begin my review…

• ·         So this movie takes place 40 years after the original Halloween. (The original one also released in October like this one. Great strategy Universal Pictures!). If you’re interested in watching this movie then what happened in the original Halloween is pretty much common knowledge. If not, then here’s the common knowledge in a nutshell: indestructible supervillain Michael Myers attacked nubile scream queen Laurie Strode and got arrested. At least that’s the knowledge required for this movie - I remember the culmination being much spookier.
• ·         Because this movie is a direct sequel to the original, you can ignore the assembly line of sequels that ran between the 80s and 90s, and the two previous attempts to reboot the franchise (2007, 2009). Which in a way, works for this reviewer. I mean who’s got time to spare 15½ hours to watch Michael getting maimed, stabbed, burnt, exploded then still come back without a scratch. I mean, after a while even you will forgot which scene belong to which sequel due to its repetitiveness.
• ·         In one of the articles, I read the director sir Gordon Green wanted to portray Michael Myers as an unstoppable killer without the Cult of Thorn: a supernatural cult that gave Michael his invincibility, immortality and the lesson that "if you have great power, you can screw over everyone". This change isn’t highly noticeable but it helps us subconsciously emphasize with the good guys because if they kill him in this one, he won’t come back again. But after seeing how much fun this movie was and looking at the box office records it broke, I’m guessing early development on a sequel will begin shortly. I mean it’s not like horror movie villains need well-developed excuses to come back and horrify us.

Anyway on to the movie, I’ll refer to our villain as "Mikey" because it rhymes with Laurie and allows me to take a creative liberty of mocking him (without having to face the consequences). I know he’s not actually going to come for me but let’s take liberties and see where this review goes.

Halloween’s central protagonist and Hollywood’s scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie) has aged, matured yet still looks as beautiful as she did forty years ago. She’s now turned into this badass from the Schwarzenegger-Stallone school of maim-n-kill. She’s got guns, booby traps, explosives and just about every thinkable invention to counter the threat of Mikey. Ever since he was institutionalized, Laurie developed post-traumatic stress disorder been waiting for the opportunity to kick his ass. However this experience has taken an emotional toll on her. She’s a divorcee, alcoholic, grandmother who doesn’t get to see her grandkid, all these problems she’s been through I hope Mikey dies slowly and painfully!

Moving on to the grandkid, we have Alyson Nelson who will portray the role of the school-going virgin whose friends will die because… that’s what always happens. The killer goes for boring friends of the circle to spice up the fun then kill the ones that we care about. In this instance, I don’t care about anyone who got killed because we don’t get enough development on them. They serve as bowling pins to be knocked down until Mikey gets to Laurie and Alyson.

There’s a lot more characters to make this venture interesting. There’s two podcasters Aaron and Dana who want to interview Mikey. Only in a horror movie we would find such idiots who invite trouble. These two morons make the mistake of going right into the killer’s face to send this invitation. You might as well just give him Laurie’s address while you’re at it. The climax will come an hour earlier and a bunch of innocent people will be spared from Michael’s wrath. Though I guess this won’t justify the ticket price I paid so I’ll go with Gordon Green’s route. There’s also the policeman sir Frank Hawkins who’s out to help the good guys. If you’ve seen enough horror movies you’ll realise the police don’t prove handy and this movie is no exception. There’s also a doctor sir called Ranbir Sartain. It’s customary for all Halloween instalments to have a psychiatric doctor or a high figure of the medical word assisting the protagonists. Normally I don’t have a problem with the doctor characters because they speak lingo that bounces off my head and they always narrate bad things happening to the good guys ("unfortunately we were unable to remove the bullet from the head", catch my drift). This doctor however has a twist regarding his character that completely threw me off. At the time, I was in awe that I was unable to predict something but now when I look back at the movie I’m confused whether I should appreciate this twist or call out its unnecessariness.

Now on to a bit of story structure. So there’s two subplots going on. On one hand, there’s Mikey escaping the asylum and killing off everyone he sees in his mad pursuit for death. On the other hand there’s Laurie’s grandkid Alyson having the time of her life at the Halloween dance. Unfortunately good old Mikey sniffs out her location and his victim list engulfs her friends including Oscar, an innocent teenager who tried to channel his "inner 50 Shades" with Alyson before she rejects him. Wow he didn’t get to fulfil his last wish before death! These two subplots are linked via Laurie and her daughter/Alyson’s mother Karen who plays an integral part in the climax. There’s some disagreements between Laurie and Karen regarding the former’s unhealthy obsession with Mikey. But thankfully the movie doesn’t waste too much time dwelling on them.    

Saving the horror till the last paragraph. I was expecting heart attack jump scares but unfortunately didn’t receive any. Probably because I could predict most of the jump scares. Probably because I’d seen the original Halloween and realised this movie also follows a similar template where the last forty five minutes is an elaborate suspense-filled bloodbath. To the film’s credit, I couldn’t predict whether Laurie, Karen and Alyson were going to survive. In terms of death scenes, there’s a guy’s jaw ripped open, Mikey scaring his victim by scattering the previous victim’s teeth (my favourite scene), a kid dying, a kid’s babysitter dying and the lights going on and off before another victim gets axed. One aspect I admire of the horror is that Mikey’s face is never shown. We’re aware from the start he’s an old man but we never get to see his face. It’s always the back or the side of his head. I think it helps that we don’t get to see this murderer’s face.

Overall I’d say the movie served its purpose to entertain the audience. There’s plenty of jump scares for the fainthearted, Jamie Lee’s badassery deserves a watch and there’s plenty of franchise loyalists who will enter cinemas to make comparisons. It served its commercial purpose at bringing back its budget ($15 million budget vs $246 million worldwide gross). If you have a penchant for slasher films, Jamie Lee Curtis or are looking for a good time pass, Halloween is the best bet for you.

Captain America 3

Superhero films have remained crowd-pulling VFX spectacles since their inception and possibly box office gold with a good screenplay. Good news folks, Civil War has a great story to tell behind those crazy CGI action scenes.

Our protagonists, The Avengers, have smashed the block one too many times whilst saving the world (Avengers, Avengers 2, Captain America 2, Iron Man 3, this list will go on forever). Now the government asks for the Sokovia Accords: accountability and oversight from the Avengers. Half the Avengers believe oversight isn’t an idea to be dismissed if they want to reduce the casualties whilst the central protagonist Steve Rogers believes "the safest hands are still our own". This escalates in a fight that pits half the team against each other. All while this is going on, Steve has to protect his best friend Bucky Barnes from the government, the Accords and the schemes of a new villain. Can Steve protect Bucky? Who is the new villain? Does the new villain’s intentions succeed? How will the Accords shape the future of the Avengers? Civil War has these answers.

As you can tell from the summary, the plot of this movie asks a lot of questions and has a huge potential in shaping the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it. More potential exploited and more questions asked than Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, which despite having so much potential didn’t click for me somehow. This film, however, clicked for me because the jokes are placed appropriately, the new characters get a good account of themselves and the villain despite not having the strength of past villains ends up doing more damage to the Avengers status quo.

The direction by the Russo brothers is top-notch and the writing by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. I was a fan of the foursome’s work in Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier and this film only makes say the same thing twice. In the comics, the Superhero Registration Act was a legislation passed that all superhero activities must be registered and regulated. This storyline was a great trigger for conflict because there was face-offs, death, imprisonment and a struggle for optimism. In this movie, the writers keep out the "registration" part and focus on government oversight. This is a good move because cinematically X-Men and Avengers aren’t linked so only certain aspects can be adapted onto the big screen.  

Another credit I’d like to give to the foursome. In the film, they’ve adopted a clever role reversal. Captain America known as "God’s righteous man" is forced to become an anti-hero of sorts in an attempt to reinforce his ideologies whereas Iron Man, dangerously lingering on impulsiveness in his "save-the-world" stance is represented as what the world wants to see as the "hero". This plot point is another underrated reason of why the action-lacked climax works so well.

The action must be given a special mention. The Lagos action scene is terrific for its awesome coordination between the Avengers. The culmination of this scene is what drives the resulting conflict. The airport action scene which was a major talking point of social media when the film was released. The explosions, the martial arts choreography, the technology, the banter, everything in this scene was perfect. You can sense the struggle of the Avengers not wanting to hurt their friends whilst at the same time having to uphold their values. Then there’s the climax. Any true Marvel fan will appreciate the epic-ness of this fight as it’s superbly choreographed between Iron Man vs Captain America and the Winter Soldier whilst at the same time, your inner child wishes they weren’t up against each other.

Black Panther and Spider-Man are the newest entrants of the franchise and I believe they deserve a separate paragraph of their own. I’d seen Black Panther in my childhood as a guest appearance in the Fantastic Four TV Series and instantly became a fan of his Batman-vibe. So seeing him on the big-screen had the fanboys excited. A key reason I liked Black Panther’s arc because the actor playing him, Chadwick Boseman, brings out the relentless pursuit without looking like an aimless killing machine. Though he benefits from good writing, I think it’s the acting and the eye expressions that did the trick.

Spider-Man’s debut in the MCU was long overdue. Though he’s made five appearances courtesy of Sony, the Marvel incarnation easily gets more right than wrong. The boy playing Spider-Man is the college-going age and his Aunt May is correctly his mother’s sister’s age and not his grandmother. Though his suit has too much Iron Man influence and that initially bothered me a bit, I eventually got over it. The actor playing him easily brings out the innocence, confusion and bravery of a school-going-teenager-turned crime fighter.

Onto the rest of the cast, Chris Evans and Robert Downey Junior get the maximum screen time. Robert Downey Junior gets to add more layers to his characters rather than be a self-destructive playboy. Chris Evans does everything we’ve seen him do before yet still appeals every time. I’d suggest the franchise do something new with his character before he becomes repetitive.

Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen share a warm chemistry as Vision and Scarlet Witch and are given better material to work on than their last film. Anthony Mackie and Paul Rudd bring a lot of fun to the proceedings as Falcon and Ant-Man. It was great to see Frank Grillo reprise his character as Crossbones. His send-off was really good even though I wanted to see more of him. William Hurt returns to role of Thaddeus Ross after eight years and surprise surprise still hates the good guys. Jeremy Renner has a brief appearance and his role has a lot more sass than his previous outings gave him. Daniel Brühl deserves a special mention as Helmut Zemo. He is easily one of the best villains Marvel has produced and is more memorable for the intrigue and ruthlessness he brings to the role. Although this hasn’t been written accurately comic book wise, it’s still a great character.     

Overall, there’s great action, great characters and an interesting storyline to bind them together. Captain America: Civil War is definitely worth a try.