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Craven by name…

The revelation of who the killers are illustrates the real problem with Scream 4, one which, if resolved correctly, could have taken the film from being merely diverting to genuinely great; its ending. After telling Sidney their plan, the killers set about making themselves look like plausible survivors so that can avert suspicion and become famous. Except at the crucial moment Emma Roberts stabs Rory Culkin through the heart, theoretically making her the sole survivor. She then stabs Sidney and starts to make herself look like a convincing victim by throwing herself through a glass table, stabbing herself, and even using the hands of one of the dead to scratch her face and pull out her hair. These scenes are pretty nuts and harrowing, and it’s a credit to Emma Roberts that she throws herself into them with a crazy abandon befitting her loopy character. Eventually she falls down next to Sidney and lapses into unconsciousness as the cops arrive.

Now, had the film ended there, it could have been a contender for one of the all-time great, dark endings. The hero from the previous films is dead, the killer gets away with it, and is even destined to become rich and famous as a result of their actions. It would be such a complete subversion of everything we know about horror film conventions and would have made the rest of the film look better in retrospect; everything conformed to formula so closely in order to make the ending completely shocking.

Instead, they chicken out by having Emma Roberts wake up in the hospital, accidentally reveal her nefariousness to the original cast members, and the whole thing ends with Sidney zapping her own cousin’s head with a defibrillator like she’s trying to give her ECT, then shooting her through the heart. It’s a cowardly ending that restores the status quo and deprives the film of its one chance to have some genuine satirical bite, like a version of Network in which, after getting shot, Howard Beale gets up and says, “Actually, this is all a bit silly, isn’t it? Let’s all get back to making proper news, and just forget about the whole devolution of news and media in general thing, because it probably isn’t anything to worry about.”

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