Scream 4: Press reviews

'The body count is high, as is Craven's determination to make us smile occasionally as the blood spurts. In the end, he engineers the kind of clever climax that justifies a film which otherwise seems a little repetitive'

'Better than its anaemic predecessor in every single way, but no more, please'

'Scream 4 is not without enjoyment. It's good to see familiar characters back and the opening moments are quite spirited. But it's a film about horror films without being a horror film itself. It's enough to make you scream'

'Scream 4 is fun, but more clever-clever than fiendishly ingenious. There is the same demented descent into a familiar maelstrom that now moves in ever decreasing circles until the horror-obsessed movie disappears up its own assiduity'

'Ultimately, ‘Scream 4' lacks the courage of its potentially subversive, game-changing convictions and dissipates into a fractured series of stabs in the dark'

'Better than the woeful Scream 3, partly thanks to the influx of new faces and the return of Williamson. But really it's more of the same, as the franchise slips further towards total self-parody'

'We've seen just about everything in Scream 4 before: once, or twice, it was clever and unnerving. By this point Craven has done it all to death'

'The screening of this, already pompously delayed by the Weinstein Company, was cancelled at the last minute... Perhaps intended to whip up pre-release momentum, the delaying tactic turned out to be an irksome inconvenience: we showed up, and nobody saw it. The reason for its cancellation was said to be a fire in the screening theatre. Was that meant to be the twist?'