10 Movie Sequels That Just Copied The Original

9. Scream 4

Terminator 1 T2 Arnie
Miramax

Sequel #3 brings to mind what Bill Hicks said about The David Letterman Show – it thinks it’s edgy and hip, but it’s just as mainstream and commercial as its competitors.

We get a taste of how hip the movie thinks it is during the pre-title sequence, which tries to freshen things up by pulling the movie-within-a-movie trick not once, but twice, but that turns out to be a clever-clever false scare to distract us from the fact we’re not really seeing anything new.

When a killer stalks a bunch of cine-literate teens (again), taunting them with horror movie trivia (again), David Arquette’s cop proves such an incompetent goofball (again) that the real detecting has to be done by Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox. Again.

For all the nudge-wink self-awareness, the suspense and surprises are few, all the disposable characters wear Red Shirts and the killer’s identity is predictable. Surely it’s time that owning a Ghostface mask became illegal in Woodsboro?

Contributor

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.'