Scream 3

The Scream franchise has finally done what once seemed impossible: it has become the very thing it mocked.

Three years after the events of Scream 2, Ghostface returns to carve up the cast of “Stab 3,” the movie-within-a-movie sequel. Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott is in hiding. She’s barely in the film at all. That should tell you something.

The movie starts promisingly. Roger Corman appears as a studio producer. There’s a winking acknowledgment of fan outrage over a death in the previous film. Then Jay and Silent Bob show up on a studio tour, and you realize something has gone terribly wrong.

Director Wes Craven, once the maestro of meta-horror, seems exhausted. He recycles setups from earlier entries, including that soundproof room from Part 2. The tone lurches wildly—pratfalls here, supernatural dream sequences there. Nothing coheres.

With Campbell absent for most of the running time, Courteney Cox and David Arquette shoulder the burden. They’re game, but the script—clearly rewritten into oblivion—gives them nothing to work with. Jenny McCarthy plays an actress complaining about constant rewrites and having only two scenes. It’s the film’s most honest moment.

Characters split up for no reason. The first film would have mocked this as suicidal stupidity. The second would have engineered some contrived excuse. Here? One character says, “You go that way, I’ll go this way.” Cut to the next scene.

A magical voice-changing device allows Ghostface to mimic anyone, rendering every phone call suspect. It’s lazy. We know it long before the characters do, turning suspense into tedium.

Plot holes abound. After an opening sequence set in LA’s infamous gridlocked traffic, how does Sidney even reach the finale’s mansion in time? Do all the cars vanish along with narrative logic?

The self-awareness that made Scream vital has curdled into self-parody. Jamie Kennedy returns (via video) to explain the rules of trilogies. Carrie Fisher has a funny bit as a Carrie Fisher look-alike. These moments remind you what the series once was.

By the climax, we’re in Scooby-Doo territory. Secret passages. Characters conveniently knocked unconscious. Ghostface literally yanking a rug out from under a victim. It’s embarrassing.

The first Scream subverted slasher tropes. The second succumbed to them. This one can’t even manage that. It’s neither scary nor thrilling—just a muddled mess that feels assembled from other movies’ deleted scenes.

I suspect the real horror story is what happened behind the scenes. This reeks of compromises and panic. A franchise that’s become its own punchline.