HALLOWEEN 2K23: A Review of "Scream 3"

"Surprise Sidney. Are you surprised to see Ghostface again, Sidney? NO?! Well surpiiiiise anyway, Sidney."

Spookytober 2023 continues on! Welcome back. Dust off your five and dime "Father Death" costumes, we're rolling with the Scream series.

Today we take a look at Scream 3. Released in 2000, Scream 3 does the same old schtick of Neve Campbell's character Sidney Prescott, oddly enough, being stalked and nearly killed a few times by a person in a widely-manufactured, easily available "Ghostface" costume. Usually after she's been called on the phone and mocked and taunted a few times to the point of reducing her to tears. What kind of introduction to the movie is that, you might ask? Well, where this one differs from the previous two we've reviewed so far is that due to the April 1999 high school massacre at Columbine, violence in media was drastically toned down in a few places. Sure, some places like South Park and video games stayed lewd and crude, but other things? Like widely produced horror franchises? Yeah, they got hit hard.

Parker Posey's hair looks like it's trying to accomplish three
different styles all at the same time.

Therefore, Scream 3 to me is one of the weaker movies in the series and doesn't really act like a true "horror" movie. Comedy was favored in the screenplay and it's slapstick plays out on screen with Ghostface getting tossed around like a ragdoll and not really being all that frightening. Let's slice into Scream 3 shall we?

Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), now the host of a successful talk show for some reason, is contacted by Ghostface (voiced by Roger L. Jackson), who demands to know the whereabouts of Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell). When Cotton refuses to cooperate, Ghostface breaks into his home and attacks his girlfriend Christine (Kelly Rutherford). Cotton rushes home, only for Ghostface to kill Christine, then Cotton. Detective Mark Kincaid contacts Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox-Arquette) to discuss the recent murders, prompting her to travel to Hollywood, where she finds Dewey Riley (David Arquette) working as an adviser on the set of Stab 3, the third film in the series based on the Ghostface murders. Ghostface kills Stab 3 actress Sarah Darling (Jenny McCarthy), causing production of the film to be halted. The remaining cast, along with Dewey and Gale, gather at the home of Jennifer Jolie (Parker Posey), the actress playing Gale in Stab 3. Ghostface murders her bodyguard and uses a gas leak to cause an explosion, which kills actor Tom Prinze (Matt Keeslar).

Sidney is living in seclusion as a crisis counselor for an abused women's hotline, fearing another killer may strike. Having uncovered Sidney's location, the killer begins taunting her by phone using a voice changer to sound like her deceased mother Maureen Prescott (Lynn McRee), forcing Sidney out of hiding and drawing her to Hollywood. Martha Meeks (Heather Matarazzo), the sister of Sidney's murdered friend Randy, visits Sidney and the others to deliver a videotape that Randy (Jamie Kennedy) made before his death, posthumously warning them the rules of a horror film do not apply to anyone in the third and final film of a trilogy and that any of them, including Sidney, could die. The new trilogy-ending rules are as follows:

"Seriously, Domino's; I'm getting sick of your shit!"

1. "You've got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work. Basically in the third one, you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up."
2. "Anyone, including the main character, can die. This means you, Sid."
3. "The past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest! Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you."

Sidney is later attacked by Ghostface at a movie set, forcing the police to withhold her at their station. Dewey, Gale, Jennifer, and the remaining cast, Angelina (Emily Mortimer) and Tyson (Deon Richmond), attend a birthday party for Stab 3's director, Roman Bridger (Scott Foley). After Gale discovers Roman's body in the basement, Ghostface attacks the group, killing Angelina, Tyson and Jennifer. The killer then orders Sidney to the mansion to save Gale and Dewey. When Sidney arrives, Ghostface lures her inside to where Gale and Dewey are bound and gagged. As Sidney is freeing them, Ghostface appears, though Sidney gains the upper hand using a hidden gun to fight him off. Kincaid shows up but is knocked unconscious by Ghostface. Sidney flees and hides in a secret screening room where she is discovered by Ghostface, who reveals himself as Roman, having survived being shot by wearing a bulletproof vest.

Roman admits to being Sidney's half-brother, born to their mother Maureen when she was an actress in Hollywood. Four years prior, he had tried reuniting with her, only for her to reject him due to him being the product of rape. Bitter over the rejection, Roman began stalking her, filming all the men she philandered with and showing Billy Loomis (played in Scream by Skeet Ulrich) the footage of Billy's father with Maureen, which motivated Billy and Stu Macher (played in Scream by Matthew Lillard) to kill her, thus setting off the string of murders in Sidney's hometown and at her college. When he discovered how much fame Sidney had attracted due to those events, Roman snapped and lured Sidney out of hiding, planning to kill her and frame her for the murders. After Roman kills Stab producer John Milton (Lance Henriksen), whom he accuses of being his biological father and one of their mother's rapists, Sidney denounces him and his motives, provoking an enraged Roman to engage Sidney in a fight that ends when Roman shoots Sidney in the chest; however, Sidney survives the shot and stabs Roman multiple times, revealing to him that she, too, was wearing a bulletproof vest. As Dewey and Gale arrive, a screaming Roman suddenly resurfaces with a knife; Sidney yells at Dewey to shoot Roman in the head, which Dewey does, finally killing him.

LIVE LOOK IN: David Arquette and Courteney Cox
take their vows at their wedding.

Later at Sidney's house, Dewey proposes to Gale, who accepts. Sidney returns from a walk and leaves her gates, which were previously shown to be alarmed, open. She enters her home and is invited to join Dewey, Gale, and Kincaid to watch a movie. As she goes to join the others, her front door blows open behind her, but she walks away, leaving it as is.

...and so we come to the end of the Scream trilogy. A trilogy it would remain for many years indeed. Scream 3, if it stood as the end of a trilogy, would stand as a weaker ending to a trilogy, in my opinion. Thankfully the next three films occurred so this movie got bailed out. Take away the prospect of "ending a trilogy", Scream 3 is okay. It definitely suffers by not having Kevin Williamson in the writer's role as he wrote Scream and Scream 2. The Scream-esque tongue-twisting dialogue that also showcases a love for movies seems carbon-copy in this one, with that knowledge in mind. Only Kevin could really make those wordy "who talks like this?" dialogue exchanges seem fluent and natural. The classroom scene in Scream 2 comes to mind, for sure. Scream 3 is kind of devoid of those moments.

As mentioned, Scream 3 also suffers from a lack of genuine scares and horror. It's more of a mystery-thriller with a lot of comedy and some slapstick sprinkled in as well, making it less of a horror movie. It's a slasher movie for sure, but the idea of being scared by watching this movie is a lost idea. Scream had some spooky moments, Scream 2 was straight eerie a couple of times. Scream 3? Not so much. I get it though, right? Real life violence is much more horrifying than a horror movie, so the horror movie's always going to suffer. They even inserted some goofier cameos; Carrie Fisher cameos as a clerk who "almost got Princess Leia in Star Wars but lost it to the girl banging George Lucas"... ha ha. There was also a brief Miramax-stroking-themselves cameo of Jay and Silent Bob, played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith. Which goes hand in hand with Wes Craven's cameo writing/directing another Scream movie in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. I thought that was a nice, if not weird, insertion.

"Hey, what are you chewing on? Don't chew on that!
Give that to me."

The characters in Scream 3 were top tier though, at least in my view. In keeping with true Scream fashion, the main three characters Sidney, Gale, and Dewey play their roles just as you'd expect, and their brand-new side characters are entertaining, to say the least. One thing though is for some reason Courteney Cox picked a really bizarre hairstyle for this one. Almost like she buzzed her head and then got hair extensions for some reason. WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR BANGS, COURTENEY?! I also failed to mention in my Scream 2 review that I was happy Randy got the axe. In Scream, Randy was a relatable loser nerd I liked, but in Scream 2 he was an obnoxious dillhole and I was quite pleased to see him get got. His absence in Scream 3 was not missed by me, but they still had to shoe-horn him in with a "Oh by the way in case a third movie happens Randy recorded the trilogy-rules for us because we can't just write a new character or have of us boneheads figure it out". Ha. Sorry, unpopular opinion there.

To summarize, Scream 3 is okay. It doesn't hold a candle to Scream or Scream 2, but thankfully comes off better than what we get next. Wink, wink. Stay tuned, SPOOKYTOBER HALLOWEEN 2K23 continues soon!