Scream 4

Scream 4 (or Scre4m), released in 2011, the third sequel to Scream, brought the action back to Woodsboro, dealt with the legacy of the original trilogy, and parodied the various trends in horror that have cropped up in the decade since the last Scream movie -- namely, the recent surge of remakes and reboots of classic horror series.

While it was decently received by critics and fans, its disappointing box office returns^[1] may have short-circuited its attempt to restart the franchise with a new trilogy.

Tropes used in Scream 4 include:

• Actor Allusion: Gale and Rebecca's conversation has Rebecca bring up how surprised she is that Gale and Dewey's marriage worked as well in real life as it did in the Stab movies. The actors who play Gale and Dewey, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, are married. Also becomes Harsher in Hindsight when one remembers that the two of them separated not long after filming on Scream 4 was wrapped -- and that the main thrust of Dewey and Gale's story is that their marriage is falling apart.
• Anyone Can Die: The marketing has strongly teased the possibility of series regulars getting killed off. They don't, though all of them come close.
• Ax Crazy: Jill Roberts. Perhaps more so than any of the previous Ghostfaces.
  • Chloe may count as well, considering that she brutally stabbed Rachel over talking too much during Stab 6.
• Big Bad Duumvirate - Jill and Charlie are the joint-killers that donned the Ghostface identity here, the latter for his love towards Jill, and the former to make herself a "sole-surviving hero", getting the fame that comes with the title.
• Bond One-Liner

Sidney: You forgot the first rule of remakes, Jill: Don't fuck with the original.

• Bury Your Gays: Played for laughs. Robbie states that being gay is probably the only way to survive a horror film. Later when Ghostface attacks him, he admits he's gay thinking it will save him. It doesn't.
• Casting Gag: Erik Knudsen not only was in the second chapter of the Saw saga, though the forth chapter is mocked in the the Stab openings, but also starred in the CBS TV show Jericho the lead of which was none other than Skeet Ulrich, who played Billy Loomis in the first Scream. And even more surprising or by sheer coincidence, his name in Scream 4 is named Robbie Mercer, which sounds a lot like the name of the character (Bobby Mercer) in Four Brothers who was played by Mark Wahlberg and who is the brother of Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block fame who played Knudsen's father in the second Saw film and is Mark's brother.
• Cash Cow Franchise: While Stab was entering this with the third installment (the first not based on real life murders), the fact that it got to 7 installments - one of which has time travel - shows it went down the "grab a quick buck" path rather easily.
• Continuity Nod: The girl in the beginning getting crushed by a garage door.
• The Danza: Emma Roberts' character is named Jill Roberts.
• Death by Sex: Apparently, averted. The trailer states that "the rules have changed. Virgins can die now." In the trailer^[2], this is then promptly used by Kirby for a Take That at the girls sitting next to her:

"Does that mean I'm not gonna live as long as these two?"

• • The answer seems to be "Yes," but it's never definitely stated she gets it, except by Jill -- who has a vested interest in her being dead, and who wasn't on the scene when it happened so it's likely she's only assuming it's such. And since Kirby went down well with fans - being played by Hayden Panettiere didn't hurt - the possibility of her coming back cannot be ruled out. Especially as unlike virtually every other victim throughout the series the last time we see Kirby she's still alive...
  • If Kirby actually died, it's a weird inversion - she died for not having sex (with the eventual murderer of all people, as a Moment Killer ruined their advances on each other)
• Distaff Counterpart: Kirby, for Randy from the original.
• Downer Ending: Yes, in the end, Jill and Charlie's plans are foiled. However, all the new characters, save for Judy^[3], are dead. Sidney, Dewey, and Gale come out injured and broken. The media are convinced that Jill is a hero, and one wonders how Sidney is going to take having to tell the world that her own family member was playing them all like fiddles, and was committing the murders herself.
• Drinking Game: At the Stabathon.
• Evil Is Hammy: Jill, especially in the scene where she's self-harming to make herself look like a victim of the killer.
• Evil Plan: The events of the film were all planned out by Jill, who wanted to kill Sidney, frame Trevor, betray Charlie, and come out the Final Girl of the movie so that she could have the same fame and hero worship that Sidney got for surviving her first three ordeals. The Moral Event Horizon is crossed when she decides that, in order to be more convincing and sympathetic, she had to kill off her own mother, in addition to Sidney. Considering her mother is Mary McDonnell, Jill and the movie itself cross a Moral Event Horizon when she succeeds, though Your Mileage May Vary.
• Executive Meddling: It apparently underwent a lot of this from the Weinsteins before its release, including most of the script changes.
• Fan Service: Putting Lucy Hale, Shenae Grimes, Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Aimee Teegarden, Brittany Robertson, Alison Brie, Hayden Panettiere, Emma Roberts, Marley Shelton and a still-sexy Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox in the same movie defines the term, even if many of them are bumped off before (and in Emma's case, during) the finale. The only survivors, other than guess who, are Kristen (who was actually in the movie within the movie), Marley, and possibly Hayden.
  • And as for Emma Roberts and Hayden Panettiere sharing a bed, thank you.
• Fan Disservice: Subverted. Just before Olivia is killed off she undresses and is seen in her underwear. However she puts a baggy sweater on thus eliminating the Disservice element.
• Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Jill's motivation for the killings.
• Film Within A Film: Stab 6 within Stab 7 within Scream 4, with a reappearance of Stab 1 halfway through the film.
  • Apparently Stab 3 did get made, and it was based off of Scream 3. So it was about the original actors, played be new actors, trying to make Stab 3 and dying, while Sid, Gale, and Dewey, all played by new actors, investigated the deaths. It was a movie within a movie within a movie. And it couldn't have made much sense.
  • Stab 5 was the worst, with all that time travel stuff.
• Groin Attack: Jill to Trevor. With a gunshot.
• Groundhog Day Loop: It has got to start feeling that way to poor Sid. The sad part is with Jill and Charlie donning the mask for reasons that have almost no connection to the original murders, it's unlikely that it's ever going to stop. There will always be psychopaths who go after Sidney because she's famous for being the ultimate Final Girl. She'll probably be dodging killers and watching people die until her old age. Luckily she has gotten very, very good at it.
• It Runs in The Family: One of the killers, Charlie, is played by Rory Culkin. The brother of Macaully Culkin, who has played a sociopathic killer not once but twice, in The Good Son and Party Monster.
  • As of this movie, might also be the case in-universe with the Roberts family. Both Sidney’s half-brother Roman and first cousin Jill turn out to be psychopathic murderers.
• The Ladette: Kirby, a brash, snarky, tomboyish horror buff who makes the first move on a timid boy she's into.
• Made of Iron: Holy crap, Jill. The girl scratches herself, pulls out her hair, stabs herself in the shoulder, runs her face into a glass picture frame, and then throws herself through a glass coffee table. At the hospital she's still able to start up another rampage, nearly killing Sidney and Dewey. A defibrillator to the head only momentarily slows her down. It isn't until she shot directly in the heart that she stops. She's probably the toughest killer yet.
• Moment Killer: Oh, Trevor, why did you interrupt the geek getting the girl?
• Eucatastrophe: Jill nearly gets away with her plan, except a) Sidney survives her attack and b) she mentions how she and Gale have matching wounds, despite the fact that she should have no way of knowing that.
• No Export for You: You want to hear more of Wes Craven, Hayden Panettiere and/or Emma Roberts? Luckily they're on the DVD Commentary track (as is Neve Campbell, who literally phones in her contribution)... what's that? You live in the UK? And it's not included on the Region 2 release, either on the DVD or blu-ray? Well, if you don't have a multiregion player...
• Not Quite Dead: A rare heroic example -- Sidney, who was presumed to have been killed, managed to survive after all. Wild Mass Guessing also claims that Kirby may have survived. There also seems to be hope for Robbie.
  • Alas, Robbie is confirmed on screen to be with his ancestors, complete with body on view. Kirby, on the other hand, may indeed be just hiding.
• Offhand Backhand: Sydney pulls one by casually turning and shooting an attacking Not Quite Dead Jill with a handgun.
• Oh Crap: Gale and Dewey upon realizing that Jill is the killer.
• Outlaw Couple: Charlie thought that he and Jill were this. Unfortunately for him, Jill was looking to play the Final Girl instead. Emphasis on Final.
• Playing Against Type: Emma Roberts - and then some - as Jill.
• Plot Armor: Discussed in regards to Sidney. She still has it.
• Police Are Useless: Hoss and Perkins are nowhere to be found while Olivia is being stabbed to death. Really, any cop in this series not named Dewey is pretty much hopeless.
  • They even note that police in horror films tend to be worthless, and die. Their right on both counts.
• Polish the Turd: Parodied in the cast/crew section on the film's website, where all of the actors' bios are heavily glowing, praising their careers. When you read the one for David Arquette, however, you realize that the whole thing's a joke.

David Arquette is an actor, writer, director and producer whose unique sensibility makes him one of the most versatile talents working in the entertainment industry today, able to segue from comedy to drama with extraordinary ease. This makes David Arquette extremely uncomfortable, because of the fact that he is writing this bio himself and it seems arrogant to boast about his incredible talents in such a way while also referring to himself in the third person.

• Red Herring: The movie likes to hint at Trevor. He really was just trying to protect Jill, after all.
• Sacrificial Lion: Kirby and, to some degree, Robbie and Charlie. Though in Kirby's case, she may be alive since unlike the other two they never confirmed she was dead. (While a lot of fans argue Miss Reed is dead, a lot of fans argue she isn't - and on the DVD/Blu-ray commentary track Hayden Panettiere and Wes Craven confirm that Kirby's fate is indeed left unclear, a rarity for a series that likes to make sure we know who's Killed Off for Real. Craven has subsequently Tweeted that he doesn't think Kirby's gone to the great big cinema in the sky.)
• Sequel Gap: It came 11 years after its predecessor (which incidentally is longer than the time it took to make and release all three previous films) and thus takes shots at basically everything that happened to horror films in-between.
• Shout-Out: One of the characters is named after Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in Psycho.
• Something Only the Culprit Would Know: Jill and Gale's "matching wounds."
  • With the invention of the internet and dozens of witnesses, never mind a rather lengthy time between her attack and the events that led to the hospital scene (enough for a news report), was it out of the question that the details of the crime were already reported and she heard about them? Not hard for the news to say "this famous author got stabbed in the shoulder." Hello Fridge Logic. Possibly justified as Dewey from an earlier scene is clearly oblivious to how fast information spreads, and in this case he's right.
  • However, the news report aired, presumably, after Kirby got Jill from the house (since Kirby left before the attack) and it's easy to assume they never saw the news report. Robby and Charlie were too freaked out from the attack, given that they believed their lives would go to shit thanks to the attack happening at an event THEY were throwing. They were right.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Subverted like there's no tomorrow. Characters are thrown at us as being replacements for the characters of the original film, but most of the new characters die, the apparent Sidney replacement turns out to be the killer, and we even get a Billy replacement who is almost successfully framed for all the murders.
  • Hell, the entire new cast is built up as a counterpart to someone from the original:
    • Jill: Sidney
    • Kirby: Tatum
    • Trevor: Billy
    • Robbie: Randy
    • Charlie: Stu
    • Judy: Dewey
    • Rebecca: Gale
• Those Two Guys: Deputies Anthony Perkins and Ross Hoss fall under this.
• Too Dumb to Live: Rebecca. After Ghostface appears on the hood of her car that she has locked herself in and reveals he cut the wires, he disappears when she tries to signal a car down. Instead of staying in the car and calling the cops to rescue her, she gets out of the car and runs for the parking garage exit. Take a guess as to how well that turns out.
  • Robbie may count as well, considering that he went walking outside, alone, drunk, when he knew there was a killer on the loose. Though he may have thought he was safe due to the rules started in the film class scene. Not really the case, though.
  • Perkins gets himself killed, along with Hoss, by choosing to joke around.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer makes it look like they're spoiling Gale's death, but she survives yet again.
  • It also makes it appear as if Ghostface is in Jill's closet. Not really the case, AT ALL. It did, however, spoil Robbie's death, Hoss' and Perkins's deaths, Rebecca's death, and Marnie's body crashing through the window.
• Trilogy Creep
• True Companions: Sidney, Gale, Dewey and Randy. Sidney and Gale are a particularly good example in that despite their long history together they never really become friends -- but have saved each others lives numerous times and know they can count on each other.
• Vasquez Always Dies: Averted by Hicks. "Wear the vest, save your chest.". It's worth noting that this is the only time this trope was featured in the Scream franchise.
• Villainous Breakdown: Arguably Jill goes through this in the end after her entire plan falls apart and basically turns to Taking You with Me.
• Where It All Began: Woodsboro.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Jill's self-mutilation in order to make people think she was a victim.
  • And unlike the last time it was tried, it succeeds.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Charlie.

1. ↑ The three previous films took in upwards of $100 million each domestically, but this one didn't even reach that amount with domestic and overseas grosses combined. On the other hand, it only cost about $40 million to make.
2. ↑ but not in the movie itself -- the two scenes aren't anywhere near each other
3. ↑ and arguably Kirby