Scream 3

Ghosts in the Backlot

I have always found it strangely fitting that *Scream 3* feels like a movie at war with itself. Released in 2000, under the heavy shadow of the Columbine tragedy, the studio was terrified of its own product. The mandate came down from on high: less blood, more laughs. Wes Craven, a director who understood the mechanics of fear better than almost anyone, had to pivot. Working from a script by Ehren Kruger (original architect Kevin Williamson was busy), Craven relocated the bloodletting from suburban Ohio to the sun-bleached artificiality of a Hollywood studio lot. The result becomes a messy, compromised, yet endlessly compelling piece of pop culture.



Watching it now, the metatextual layer is almost uncomfortable to peel back. The plot revolves around the fictional production of *Stab 3*, where the cast is being picked off by a new Ghostface. Yet the real rot in this story is not the guy in the mask. It is John Milton, the sleazy studio producer whose history of casting couch abuse is revealed to be the catalyst for the entire franchise's trauma. Knowing that Bob and Harvey Weinstein produced this film makes those scenes curdle in your stomach. Craven shoots the studio backlots like haunted houses, full of false fronts and hollow interiors. The danger is not lurking in the woods. It is sitting in the executive boardroom.

And yet, amid the bleakness of its underlying message, the film is often deliriously funny. I am not entirely sure the balance always works, but when it does, it is almost entirely due to Parker Posey.



Posey plays Jennifer Jolie, the hyper-neurotic actress cast as Gale Weathers in the movie-within-a-movie. She hijacks the entire picture. After years of watching indie darlings play it straight in slashers, Posey's sudden injection of slapstick feels genuinely shocking. Watch her body language in the scene where she confronts the real Gale (Courteney Cox). Posey mirrors Cox's aggressive posture but adds a frantic, vibrating desperation. She throws herself around sets, jumping into the arms of her bodyguard at the slightest noise. When she is finally trapped behind a two-way mirror, banging on the glass while Gale and Dewey try to find her, the comedy suddenly drains out of the frame. You are left watching a terrified woman realize her fame cannot save her.

Roger Ebert, reviewing the film at the time, complained that the supporting characters were "so thin, they are transparent," but he correctly noted that the camera absolutely loved Neve Campbell. He was right. Campbell is the anchor holding this bizarre carnival to the ground.



Because of scheduling conflicts, Sidney Prescott spends the first act isolated in a remote cabin, working a crisis hotline under a fake name. The physical toll of surviving two massacres is written all over Campbell's posture. She moves stiffly, constantly checking locks, her voice hushed so as not to wake the ghosts she brought with her. When she eventually steps onto the replica set of her own childhood home—built for the *Stab* production—it is a clever piece of staging. Sidney is literally walking through a cheap imitation of her own trauma.

Whether that is a flaw or a feature of *Scream 3* comes down to your patience with franchise maneuvering. It does not have the razor-sharp tension of the 1996 original. The voice-changer gimmick that allows the killer to mimic anyone is completely ridiculous. Yet beneath the camp and the studio interference, there is a surprisingly sad story about how the movie business chews up young women and spits out sequels. I cannot say it is a great horror film. As a Hollywood tragedy disguised as a slasher, though, it is hard to look away.