The biggest slasher franchise of the 90s is back...
I'm sure there will be further teasers building up to the release date (April 15th, 2011), keep an eye out at http://www.scream-4.com/
There is no greater example of both the strengths and weaknesses of the concept of genre than Scream: the first film was a slick melange of familiar genre tropes (codes), packed with specific intertextuality ... but also ultimately made a significant change to the genre, in that this was the first time characters were self-aware of being in a horror movie, and discussed the rules of horror movies. Highly postmodern ... even more so Scary Movie, a swiftly released pastiche which might be seen as a nice example of Metz's theory of genre cycles* in action. The upcoming fourth Scream explicitly promises to change the rules once again...
* Metz, Christian, (1975) argued that genres go through a typical cycle of changes during their lifetime: (1) the classical stage; (2) self-conscious parody; (3) contesting the proposition that they belong to the genre; (4) finally, a criticism of the genre itself. [source]
