Scream 3 focuses once again on Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her mother's secretive life.  Sidney, now living in seclusion because "if no one can find her, no one can kill her," must come out into the open when things go awry on the set of Stab 3 - the movie focusing on the Woodsboro murders (Scream 1 and 2).  While it's interesting to see the movie portrayed in this way with 'flashbacks' to the original movies complete with voice-overs and set recreations, Scream 3 fails to present an interesting storyline.  The horror is there, the mystery is there - as it always has been in all the Scream movies - but it just doesn't meld together into one cohesive movie.   Scream 3 tried to be funny, and was at times, but most of the punchlines were left unnoticed and not laughed at.

What made the first two Scream movies work is that they were full of the horror clichés that all of the actors tried to stay away from, such as saying "I'll be right back," and so on and so forth.  Unfortunately, Scream 3 fails miserably at this.  Even though they try and introduce the rules of the trilogy, such as all bets are off, Scream 3 really doesn't differ much from the first two.  Scream 3 features the same slashing and killing with the surprise ending that you wouldn't expect.   Always remember that if you think you know who did it, you don't.  That's probably the only redeeming feature of Scream 3 although once the 'surprise' killer is revealed, it leaves more questions than answers, and for the final act in the trilogy, it just doesn't make sense to end the movie like this - but at least it's over - at least until we're bombarded with Miramax's parody of Scream - 'Scary Movie,' coming at the end of March directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans.