6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 3.9 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.8 |
While Sidney Prescott lives in safely guarded seclusion, bodies begins dropping around the Hollywood set of Stab 3, the latest movie sequel based on the gruesome Woodsboro killings. And when the escalating terror finally brings her out of hiding, Sidney and other Woodsboro survivors are once again drawn into an insidious game of horror movie mayhem. But just when they thought they knew how to play by the rules, they discover that all the rules have been broken.
Starring: David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Patrick Dempsey, Scott FoleyHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 60% |
Mystery | 30% |
Teen | 25% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English, English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Sooner or later, attrition and the law of diminishing returns catch up with most movie franchises. Everything from Star Wars to Halloween to the old Road pictures with Hope and Crosby have seen their fortunes decline with repeated, and often repetitive, trips to the well. And so it probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Scream 3 is probably the weakest of the triptych involving hapless Sidney Prescott, who never seems quite able to escape from the clutches of various baddies who want to don the iconic Ghostface disguise and then go around dicing and slicing everyone with whom they come into contact. The first two Scream outings were bracing, funny and very inventive. The first Scream was a wonderful send-up of the horror genre, simultaneously exploiting and making fun of just about every cliché the idiom has offered up over the course of cinematic history. Scream 2 took the basic idea and injected a fitting “meta” structure where the release of Stab, a film about the events depicted in the first Scream, set a whole new wave of terror into motion. Scream 3 wants to have its “meta” cake and eat it, too, starting off in the hallowed highways and byways of a densely clogged Hollywood, as it deals with the drama surrounding the filming and release of the newest Stab entry, Stab 3. Confused yet? Art mirroring life (and death, as I noted in my review of Scream 2) is certainly nothing new, and if Scream brought a bit of Pirandello to the slasher film, it certainly wasn’t the first, nor will it be the last, movie to turn the camera back on itself and play it all as if it were unfolding before a funhouse mirror.
"Look, I'm only going to ask you this one more time: what's your favorite scary movie?"
The three Scream films have had some rather surprisingly noticeable differences in their Blu-ray incarnations, even though all three are offered with AVC encodes in 1080p and 2.35:1. Scream was fairly soft a good deal of the time, but it sported very nicely saturated color. Scream 2 featured a substantial uptick in clarity and sharpness when compared to the first film, but its color was somewhat pallid by comparison to Scream. Both films suffered from occasional digital noise, moiré and shimmer, though both had reasonably intact grain structure. Scream 3 falls somewhere in between the first two films in most of these categories. It's somewhat schizophrenic in its sharpness factor, with some darker shots being soft to the point of murkiness, with uneven black levels and noticeably poor contrast. Brightly lit scenes on the other hand pop with impressive clarity and sharpness. Grain is quite prevalent throughout this release and in fact approaches digital noise levels in some of the low contrast evening shots. Scream 3, like its forebears, also suffers from annoyingly persistent artifacting like moiré and shimmer.
Scream 3's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is another riot of sound effects, expertly placed, often with obvious misdirection, around an ever changing soundfield. In some ways Scream 3 is the most aggressively over the top sound mix of all three Scream 3 films, with abundant LFE and a crazy panoply of sound effects assaulting the listener. That actually makes the soundtrack perhaps too busy at times, ultimately working against the film's effectiveness, at least with regard to the scary stuff. Fidelity here is excellent, though, with really robust reproduction through all frequency ranges, and dynamic range is also very, very impressive. Source cues, effects and dialogue are very well mixed and aside from the over the top elements, which some may find distracting or even annoying after a while, this is a very fun, extremely cinematic mix that surrounds the listener in a wide variety of very inventive effects.
If Scream 3 didn't by its very nature have to stand on the formidable shoulders of Scream and Scream 2, it would probably be more solidly appreciated than it is. As it stands, it's kind of the poor stepchild of the Scream franchise, something that works in fits and starts and certainly has both humor and shock in abundance, but it simply seems a warmed over approximation of what we've seen and heard before in the first two films. This film actually probably does better in the humor department, and it has a great time skewering the pretensions and dashed dreams of Hollywood insiders. It's going to be really interesting to see what Craven and Williamson have in store for rabid fans with Scream 4, and anyone wanting to be "up to speed" with these characters would probably do well to revisit all three Scream entries. While this film isn't quite at the level of the first two, it has enough going for it to earn a rating of Recommended.
25th Anniversary Edition
1997
25th Anniversary Edition
1996
Scre4m
2011
2023
Uncut Edition
2009
Collector's Edition
1988
2010
1986
25th Anniversary Edition
1997
2000
2004
Collector's Edition
2005
2010
Unrated Version
2008
Unrated
2004
Unrated
2007
1987
2006
Collector's Edition
1998
Limited Edition
1980