“Scream 4” marks the return of the original cast trio from the first three movies, while introducing a new cast of stars to be a new generation of victims.

In the end though, should the new cast take over and push the old cast out of the way?

“Scream 3” was released in 2000, so it’s been 11 years since the close of the original trilogy.

While the original “Scream” and “Scream 2” were successful in both financially successful and well received, the third movie received lower ratings, and wasn’t as good as the first two movies.

Wes Craven, the director, has already stated that he intends for Scream 4 to start a new trilogy of Scream movies, so the question is, does Scream 4 attract enough of a new audience to make the new trilogy necessary?

The basic story in all the movies follows Sydney Prescott, who is constantly terrorized by different people dressing up in a cheap Halloween costume featuring a black robe and a white ghost mask.

The villain in every movie is given the name “Ghost Face,” and the villain usually makes a phone call to the victim before they kill them. During the phone call, Ghost Face asks the victim about scary movies. The questions can be trivia from scary movies of the past, or it may simply be questions about what scary movies the victim likes.

In “Scream 4,” Sydney Prescott returns to her hometown, the setting for the first Scream movie.

She became an author between the third and fourth movies, and was doing a book tour in her hometown when the first new victims of Ghost Face’s new killing spree are found.

Gale and Dewey (now married) are once again pulled into the horror story of their lives. Dewey is the sheriff of the town now, so he’s in charge of the investigation, while Gale has retired from news reporting, and is now trying her hand at writing fiction NOT related to the Woodsboro murder cases (from the other Scream movies).

The strength of the Scream movie series is that it’s a unique parody situation. In the movie, everything is about trying to bring the horror genera into real life.

Scream spoofs horror movie elements to a point that it’s not scary to watch. Once people realize that they’ve seen these same elements in other horror movies, they don’t have to worry about anything scaring them.

The dialog of the characters helps to sell this as an effective comedy method. Scream doesn’t contain a low level of comedy that one might find in a film like “Scary Movie;” it’s a little more intelligent.

The fact that most characters in the film like/and know a lot about the horror genera is what makes the humor such a great sell.

“Scream 4” contains all the successful plot elements from the previous trilogy (what little success there was in the third film), and successfully employs them in the newest film.

One element that ties all the movies together is “the rules.” Somebody in every movie will have knowledge of the horror movie genera enough to make a set of rules that have to be followed.

In “Scream 4,” two students who are in charge of the school’s film club fill that role.

They outline the rules for a fourth movie in a horror series. The main rule is to top the killings in the previous films.

Scream 4 does that well, while still keeping the audience wondering who Ghost Face is (another successful element in the Scream series is the mystery of who Ghost Face is).

In the end, its good to see Courtney Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell return for another movie after an 11 year hiatus, but that also serves as the movie’s greatest weakness.

The new generation of victims really isn’t that memorable despite having some fairly large names in the movie (including two stars from the former hit series “Heroes”).

Like in the first two movies, there are two people who play Ghost Face, but in Scream 4, one of them isn’t a very well developed or memorable character.

Meanwhile the other antagonist playing Ghost Face gets a boost of development for the film’s final climax.

It leaves an unbalanced feeling that comes close to offsetting the usefulness of Ghost Face in “Scream 4.”

The ending of the film makes up for the shortcomings of a lack of character development though. At least it does if one is already a fan of the series.

“Scream 4” can be watched and enjoyed by people who haven’t seen the original trilogy, but there are elements from the previous films that are incorporated into the new film that would be lost on a newcomer to the series.

To that end, “Scream 4” almost hurts itself by catering too much to its former fans and not enough to new fans.

One thing the film absolutely did get right though is the most important rule about horror movie sequels, “Don’t mess with the original.”

That rule (and those who have seen the movie will understand what that means) further works the success of the new film and makes it a “must see” for fans of the series, while making the whole series a “must see” for Scream virgins. “Scream 4” earns a 7/10.