Scream 3

Director Wes Craven is calling Scream 3 "the third and final act" in what we're supposed to have realized all along was a trilogy, like Star Wars. I can only hope he means it, because the Scream franchise, after a glorious run in which the sequel--excuse me, the second act--managed to top the original, has gotten lost in the dark catacombs of its own navel. Ehren Kruger, who took over the scriptwriting chores from an exhausted Kevin Williamson, has either come up with or been handed an okay premise: On the set of Stab 3, the third-movie-within-the-third-movie, actors playing the original Scream characters are being picked off in the same order. And Sidney's dead mother turns out to be harboring more secrets than the dad in "Twin Peaks." But Kruger doesn't have Williamson's gift for juggling levels of reality (he's playing 2-D chess on a 3-D chessboard), and Craven seems tired of repeating himself, whether he knows he's repeating himself or not.