With very few exceptions, the law of diminishing returns affects every notable franchise in the industry at one stage or another, but outside of Scream 4, Wes Craven’s slasher saga has been stating a case for arguably being the most consistent horror saga there’s ever been in terms of sustainable critical and commercial reactions.
While the fourth installment will always endure among the fandom for marking the legendary filmmaker’s final contributions to the property on the big screen before his passing, looking at the numbers, it’s the weakest of the sextet by quite some distance when it comes to both reviews and box office.
It’s one of just two Scream flicks to score lower than a 76 approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with Scream 4 also lying at the bottom of the pile when it comes to Metacritics rankings. Not only that, but it’s the only one of the six to earn less than $100 million from theaters, and it’s lagging a whole $40 million behind last year’s hybrid of soft reboot and legacy sequel as the lowest-earning outing for Ghostface.
That’s not to say it’s a bad film by any stretch, but it’s hard to try and state the case for any other Scream being measurably worse. On the other side of the coin, the fact FlixPatrol has named the fourth Woodsboro massacre as one of the most-watched features on both Google Play Movies and Chili this week underlines for the umpteenth time that the IP as a whole is in ruder health than ever.