Scream 3

Director: Wes Craven (2000)

Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette

Find it: IMDB, Amazon

They saved the best until last. Well, whatever Scream 4 comes up with, it can hardly be any worse than this second sequel. Completely embracing the movie-within-a-movie concept dreamt up by Scream 2, the third entry takes place during the filming of Stab 3. The whole Stab thing, I have problems with as a concept anyway. In this day and age, I hardly think anyone would turn a school massacre into a movie franchise, as we're expected to believe Stab does. There'd be uproar. But if you can get past that... well, you have other levels of things that don't make sense to deal with.

The surviving cast members of the previous films make a return. Well, there's only Sidney (Campbell), Gale (Cox) and Dewey (Arquette) left. Perma-wrongly accused Cotton Weary (a once more wasted Liev Schrieber) is offed in the movie's opening moments. The real movie, that is, not the movie-within-the-movie. New additions include Patrick Warburton, Lance Henriksen, Parker Posey, Patrick Dempsey and, um, Jay and Silent Bob. Also, Carrie Fisher. And Jamie fucking Kennedy, although he's dead. I've an experiment for you, Jamie fucking Kennedy: STFU.

The killer, for some convoluted reason, is stalking the cast and crew of Stab 3. It's probably Lance Henriksen's fault. These things usually are. But Sidney, Gale and Dewey are at risk too, so it's up to them to unmask the killer. Well, the cop in charge of the place is played by Patrick Dempsey. And he's crap at being anything except for surgeons or grumpy lawyers.

Scream 3 is the weakest Scream so far. Despite Randy's warning that anything goes, nothing really does go anywhere. The only big cast member to die is the most expendable (and also the most interesting) and the rest get to live to be annoying another day. Hopefully Scream 4 will have the cojones to kill one - or all - of them off, but I somehow doubt it. If you can stomach the cloying Hollywood in-jokes and predictable stalk n' stab sequences, there are enough bits of stabby goodness and amusing moments to hold the interest.