When a killer stalks a bunch of cine-literate teens (again), taunting them with horror movie trivia (again), comic relief Deputy David Arquette proves to be such an incompetent goofball (again) that the real detecting has to be done by Daphne and Velma... er... Courtney Cox and Neve Campbell. As another costumed villain chases familiar faces through a dark house with revolving walls and one-way mirrors, Ghostface becomes a cartoon villain, capable of appearing where he chooses and surviving numerous falls as well as knife and gunshot wounds. For all the film's attempts to tell us how self-aware it thinks it is, theres a hokey it-was-only-a-dream sequence, a bunch of starlets that wander off by themselves, and while chasing the culprit through the eerie mansion, the group decides to split up. Then theres the killers identity: not only is it some guy that died earlier in the film, but hes Campbells evil half-brother come to carve up anyone with a tenuous connection to the previous films. He wouldve gotten away with it too, if it hadnt been for those meddling bitches. Throughout the film, Cox and Campbell are referred to as Nancy Drew or Lois Lane, but nobody thinks to use the more fitting Danger-prone Daphne, which is probably just as well because co-star Patrick Warburton also voices Sheriff Bronson Stone on Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated. His character here, by the way, is named Steven Stone. This is not an accident, people.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
