C

While definitely a cut above most slasher flicks—not just the torture-porn trash but Wes Craven’s own recent misfire “My Soul To Take”—this attempt to reboot the “Scream” franchise after a decade on the shelf comes across as not quite funny or scary enough to hit the mark.

The formula is the same as in the first three installments. After a prologue in which some cute damsels get sliced up after receiving threatening calls from the masked killer, the plot itself kicks in. Once again it centers on Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), the put-upon heroine of the 1996-2000 installments. As one character rather unkindly puts it, however, she’s no longer an ingenue; she’s the author of a book about her ordeal that she’s returned to her hometown of Woodsboro to promote just as the local teens are about to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the notorious killings with alcohol-fueled screenings of the “Stab” movies based on the episode.

After the initial incident she becomes both suspect and target, with goofball cop, now chief, Dewey Riley (David Arquette) serving as her chief protector and his wife, erstwhile extra-breaking reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) taking up her notebook and camcorder again to track down the villain. There are plenty of secondary characters to sweeten the mix, including Sidney’s sister Kate (Mary McDonnell) and her high-school-age niece Jill (Emma Roberts), as well as Dewey’s deputies Hicks (Marley Shelton), Perkins (Anthony Andrews) and Hoss (Adam Brody). There are also Sidney’s agent Rebecca (Alison Brie) and Jill’s bevy of campus friends, including her still-insistent ex Trevor (Nico Tortorella), her pals Kirby (Hayden Panettiere) and Olivia (Marielle Jaffe), and local movie geeks Robbie and Charlie (Erik Knudsen and Rory Culkin).

It goes without saying that corpses pile up in astronomical numbers as Ghostface shows up repeatedly in pursuit of anyone and everyone in sight. The final target, of course, is Sidney, and in a protracted finale, filled with false climaxes and reversals, in which the unlikely perpetrator is revealed. And throughout Kevin Williamson sprinkles into the script the sort of knowing references to other movies and genre cliches that are expected from the series—as when Perkins and Hoss discuss the fates that traditionally befall cops in horror pictures. He also updates things to incorporate the ubiquity of cell phones, texting and Internet celebrity.

And yet none of this generates the kind of kick that the first “Scream” in particular, and the two earlier sequels in lesser measure, brought to the table. The mayhem grows more and more chaotic as the picture drags on—clocking in at nearly two hours (a consistent fault in this series)—and the witticisms too often seem contrived and pasted-on.

And though the cast—both veterans like Campbell, Arquette and Cox and the newcomers—provide everything that’s asked of them, they’re unable to overcome the fact that they’re all little more than red herrings, compelled for the plot’s sake to do things that are unutterably stupid, like going off alone and, when getting to some isolated spot, shouting out “Hello?” to a noise off-screen. Still, Campbell remains an attractive presence, though she’s getting a bit old for this stuff, and even Arquette’s goofiness and Cox’s brusqueness remain amusing enough; and among the others Roberts, Brody, Anderson, Culkin and Shelton have their moments. And Craven shows that he’s still capable of staging the frenetic action sequences, even if they don’t have the impact they once did. Technically the film is high-quality by genre standards as well.

But though “Scream 4” is above the norm for contemporary horror movies, the real competition is with the predecessors in its own series. And in that respect in comes up short—partially just as a result of the passage of time, perhaps, but life—as the many victims here would undoubtedly say—is unfair.