Scream 4 has the perfect opening to remark on a culture so saturated in meta-ness, irony, and social media that reality no longer has any meaning. In a familiar setup, two teens (Shenae Grimes, Lucy Hale) fall victim to a call and cyber-stalking from Ghostface. The taunts escalate until two Ghostfaces appear and slay the girls in a bloody scene. But this is just the opening scene of Stab 6, the franchise-within-a-franchise that now has more sequels than Scream. Couched in front of a TV, Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell—celebrities almost as recognizable as Drew Barrymore in the original—pause Stab 6 to debate the current trends in horror. But Bell grows tired of Paquin’s harping and plunges a knife into her stomach. However, this is the opening of Stab 7, watched by two lesser-known teens (Britt Robertson, Aimee Teegarden), who discuss the expansive mythology of the Stab series before, of course, Ghostface arrives, chases them around the house, and kills them both. Whereas the earlier Scream movies prove more interested in the mirroring relationship between real life and art, Scream 4 continues that trend, except with an interest in post-modernism folding over on itself in the desperate need for horror franchise reinvention. But the 2011 sequel also critiques fandom, social media, and the lengths some people will go for attention.

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