SCREAM 3 2000
39%
Directed by Wes Craven
Written by Ehren Kruger
Starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Parker Posey, Patrick Dempsey
Synopsis
Ghostface moves to Hollywood in this (allegedly) trilogy-ending installment of the nineties slasher sensation. When the cast of movie-in-the-movie Stab 3 are picked off, franchise final girl Sidney Prescott finds herself once again having to fight the past… and her cell phone.
Why We Love It
Scream 2 was that rare thing: a horror sequel that many people thought was just as good as the original—and that the Tomatometer would tell you is actually slightly better. Scream 3 was that much less rare thing: a horror sequel many fans felt was a cash-grabbing betrayal of the original and that the Tomatometer deemed a dirty, Rotten stinker. And given what was going on behind the scenes, it’s no wonder this third outing for Ghostface, Sidney, Dewey, Gale, and Co. got splatted.
Late-nineties horror wunderkind Kevin Williamson didn’t have time to write the full script for Scream 3, instead turning in a treatment that Arlington Road scribe Ehren Kruger would be tasked with adapting. What ended up on screen was very different from what Williamson had envisioned. Late 1999 was not a great time to make scary movies, especially ones set near high schools, given what had recently occurred at Columbine; the studio pushed for the action to move to L.A., away from Woodsboro High, and for the filmmakers to lean heavily into comedy over gore. (Director Wes Craven apparently put his foot down when it was suggested the film feature no violence whatsoever.)
Adding to the drama: there were scheduling difficulties with the cast and script changes that would sometimes come in on the day of shooting. (The already meta horror series reaches Peak Meta when the actors in Stab 3 complain about day-of rewrites.)
And yet if you know what you’re getting into, the comedy actually works, particularly in the character of Jennifer Jolie, played by Parker Posey, making her first big indie-to-mainstream move. Posey is a twitchy delight as the actress cast as Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers in Stab 3, stalking Cox around the backlots and frantically unraveling when her costars’ bodies start piling up. She also gets to take part in the movie’s best moment, when Jolie and Weathers encounter cynical studio archivist, Bianca (Carrie Fisher in a fabulous little cameo that has interesting new shades in the post-#MeToo era).
There are solid scares here, too, and how could there not be, with Craven behind the camera? Particularly effective is the sequence in which Campbell’s Prescott finds herself alone on the Stab 3 set, exploring a recreation of the Woodsboro home she grew up in. When Ghostface inevitably shows up, it’s a terrifying echo of the superior first film and a hint of what this trilogy closer might have been had Craven and Williamson been given the time and space to do their thing.