Maybe the rule is that the final part of a trilogy is supposed to be terrible.

Ghostface. Sidney. People die.

Directed by – Wes Craven

Written by – Ehren Kruger

Starring – Liev Schreiber, Beth Toussaint, Roger Jackson, Kelly Rutherford, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Patrick Dempsey, Lynn McRee, Lance Henriksen, Josh Pais, Deon Richmond, Matt Keeslar, Jenny McCarthy, Emily Mortimer, Parker Posey, Patrick Warburton, David Arquette, Lawrence Hecht, Heather Matarazzo, Jamie Kennedy

Man, how far off the track did this flick go! That ending, god, that ending. How moronic is it that the killer winds up being Sidney’s half brother that nobody ever heard of before! Just ridiculous. There’s no redeeming quality about this (at the time) final entry in the series. With Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) taken out of the film in the first few minutes we’re left with no good characters to watch. Randy (Jamie Kennedy) is gone, making a brief cameo as a video recording from the grave and Cotton has been killed. Who is there left to care about? Sidney (Neve Campbell) is annoying through the entire series. Dewey (David Arquette) can be funny but his up and down love affair with Gale (Courteney Cox) is about as obnoxious as Sidney is. We get Patrick Dempsey as Det. Mark Kincaid, the too obvious to be the killer suspect and then we’re treated to the worst reveal of the entire series. Seriously, Roman (Scott Foley) is Sidney’s half brother and is trying to kill her because he’s jealous of the life she had with his mother. Lame.

Maybe this is what happens when we don’t get a script by Kevin Williamson. I just watched this movie about a week ago and can barely remember what happened. What happened to the teen angle as well and when did they make a second Stab film? Didn’t the second movie start with two deaths at the screening of the first Stab movie? The weird twist of having the murderer killing people on the set of Stab 3 while we’re watching Scream 3 is cool but how come we don’t get to see Stab 2 first! Alright, I’m probably stretching it in search of things to complain about now but this flick has all kinds of problems, the biggest being that I just don’t care about anyone anymore. This seems typical of every horror film though. It’s not that often that the audience is cheering for the hero to survive. We’re usually cheering for the killer to ‘get ‘em good’ instead.

Wake me up when we find out if I'm the killer or not.

Scream 3 becomes the movie that the entire series was supposed to be mocking the whole time. It’s just a huge waste of time for a film that started out so promising. I couldn’t tell you one death that happened because I can’t remember a particularly cool one and the only reason I will remember who the killer was is because it’s so ridiculous. I really didn’t enjoy this one at all. Nothing about it really stands out to me and it really has just become another slasher flick in a sea of horror films that have been unleashed since the original Scream.

Once again, Scooby and his gang find out that the old lighthouse caretaker is the ghost.

Sorry I’ve got nothing good to say about this one and Wes Craven hasn’t exactly impressed with his work since this time. I’m hoping for something better when I head out to see Scream 4 and from what I’m hearing I think I can see how it’s going to work out. The characters of Sidney, Dewey and Gale are played out now. After Scream 3 I can’t imagine what else we could really learn about Sidney and her life. If there’s anything left to reveal than it’s going to be so ridiculous as to kill the entire series. The lack of smart dialogue and teen characters was probably a major part of the problems here. You can’t exactly keep Sidney a teen forever but maybe they should have rolled out the idea for Scream 4 instead of what they had for Scream 3. In the end I’ll always go back to Scream for a great horror movie and do my best to try and forget that parts 2 and 3 ever happened.

Under the marquee – Will