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Break out the cutlery. The third -- and last, they all swear -- chapter in the knifekill saga that reinvigorated not only the career of Elm Street director Wes Craven (earning him enough clout to film the artsy, Oscar-rumored Music of the Heart) but the whole horror industry (for a little while, anyway) has made its belated, much-delayed arrival.
Tha's right, welcome back poor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), the girl with the Ginsu bullseye tattooed on her forehead. After surviving two previous rounds of homicidal masked fiends, fake voices, untraceable phone calls (don't these people know about *69?), and body counts worthy of a bad mayonnaise day at Duke Sandwich, you'd think she'd have moved to a Quonset hut at McMurdo Bay, Antarctica, by now, surrounded with rapidfire artillery and a couple dozen underfed rabid cyborg wolves. But no, the best she can manage is living on a ranch with a geriatric Golden Retriever and taking crisis telephone calls under a fake name. I mean, her security setup is so feeble she's got an alarm on the front gate in case anybody opens it without punching in the pass code, even though the actual fence is so low my grandmother could get over it on a low blood-sugar day.
Surprise - this time the killer doesn't come after Sid at home (or dorm). Instead, in a faraway land we'll call Hollywood, cast and crew for Stab 3, the latest installment in the movie version of her life, have started turning up thoroughly perforated by somebody with a larger blade collection than Emeril Lagasse. Then when the L.A. cops, who really aren't any smarter than Greer cops despite better haircuts, can't stop the mayhem, they call Sid and ask for her help. So, because she still has to play by all the stupid horror-movie rules these things like so much to lampoon, she doesn't get on the next Carnivale cruise to the Lesser Antilles, but dutifully shows up on the film's set, right where she knows the latest killer is. Apparently it has to do with the ghost of her mother, who's been visiting her daydreams dressed in a gauzy gown like something from an old Stevie Nicks video.
At least Sidney's not alone. Trash journalist Gail Weathers (Courteney Cox) and her Stab alter ego (Parker Posey), lovable ex-deputy Dewey (Cox's real-life hub David Arquette - what does she see in him besides built-in discount long-distance phone service?), Stab's director (Scott Foley, from "Felicity"), original accused murderer Cotton (Liev Schreiber), the guy who played Elaine's loutish car-salesman boyfriend Puddy on "Seinfeld," and even Jenny McCarthy are among those on the menu. Can Buffy - wait, wrong series - can Sidney muster her considerable will-to-live and impressive dicing skills to prevail, even against a killer with an unnaturally hard skull?
Scream 3 is actually the best of the lot, even though what they try to pass off as horror is really just chill-ride boo candy. Craven doesn't trot out any particularly new or interesting directorial tricks, but the script, written by Ehren Kruger (!)(who wrote last summer's tidy thriller Arlington Road, as well as the upcoming John Frankenheimer film Reindeer Games) instead of franchise creator Kevin Williamson, who these days is too busy coming up with new reasons to show Katie Holmes's midriff on "Dawson's Creek," does manage to find some humor in all this, if you don't mind laughing at an often brutal flick that looks like a bayonet-fetishist's wet dream. That, and enduring the stupid fake-voice gag that gets old after about three minutes, too much plot, a profanity level up near the Kevin Smith mark (who shows up in cameo as Silent Bob, with Jay in tow) (not that profanity doesn't have its place, and I don't mean to sound priggish, having brought the subject up with increasing frequency in recent weeks and having just used the term "wet dream," but haven't pop media helped shrink Americans' functional vocabulary enough as it is?), the prerequisite rapcore soundtrack, and overuse of the old Clark Kent bit (where somebody is always walking in right after the costumed character has left, thereby fostering suspicion in him/herself). It's actually more like a long sketch about a horror movie, but that's okay since at least the literate adults in attendance can revel in getting references such as those to Salman Rushdie and John Milton that go silently over junior-high, parent-accompanied heads.
Best of all, if you see it soon, maybe there'll be an usher dressed up like the killer, skulking around the theater in quaint 1950/60s William Castle fashion as one did at evening shows last weekend at the Hollywood 20, surprising less alert moviegoers for the entertainment of everybody else. I hadn't been able to say "the show in the audience was as good as the one on the screen" since somebody turned a badger loose in Swiss Family Robinson when I was a kid. C+
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