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Scream 3 makes a fitting finale to the all-time most successful horror-movie franchise -- a uniquely self-aware series that manages to lampoon fright-film conventions even as it hews to them lovingly. This time around, murder-spree survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) are reunited in Hollywood, where their harrowing exploits are being dramatized in a cheesy slasher film. That's unnerving enough. What's worse is that the actors playing them are being slain brutally, one at a time by a killer who is supposed to be dead. (The victims include erstwhile Playboy pinup Jenny McCarthy and indie-film darling Parker Posey.) Screenwriter Kevin Williamson peppers his script with references to numerous horror films; fans of the genre will enjoy the lengthy recapitulations of "rules" predetermining the outcome of a trilogy's final installment. Director Wes Craven expertly manipulates the familiar situations to provide an equal number of laughs and shrieks, giving the Scream series an exemplary send-off. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Wes Craven's Scream (1996) was a half-parody/half-tribute to the first wave of slasher films of the 1970s and 1980s, and since most of them spawned a large number of sequels, it's only appropriate that Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson produced a third installment of their Scream franchise. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), traumatized by the brutal murders of her friends, has left her hometown of Woodsboro and is working in California as a crisis intervention counselor. Meanwhile, "Stab," the novel by Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox Arquette), is spawning a series of successful horror films, and as Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro is being filmed in Los Angeles, a lunatic has gotten his hands on a copy of the script, and is murdering the characters in the same order that they die in the movie. But predicting who will die next is not as simple as it might seem, since the producers have circulated three different screenplays, with different endings. In addition to Campbell and Cox-Arquette, David Arquette returns from the first two films as less-than-bright "Dewey" Riley; new members of the cast include Parker Posey, Patrick Dempsey, Scott Foley, and Jenny McCarthy. Kevin Williamson wrote the original story, but the screenplay was penned by Ehren Kruger. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 717951004895
• Source: DIMENSION
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Cinemascope (2.35:1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Français
• Subtitles: English, Español
• Time: 1:57:00
• Sales Rank: 8,903

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