New kid on a scary block

“I only saw the first one,” Culkin recalls, “and my sister would cover my eyes. One year for Halloween, I think it was second grade, I was actually Ghostface. The night before my audition for Scream 4, I couldn’t find the first Scream (1996), so I watched Scream 2 (1997). So I just saw them in a strange order: second one, third one and first one.”

Actually, Culkin very nearly missed the Scream boat. Script pages, referred to as “sides,” were mailed to his house in advance of his scheduled audition, but he didn’t notice them under a stack of other mail. As a result, the 21-year-old veteran of You Can Count on Me (2000), Signs (2002), The Chumscrubber (2005) and Twelve (2010) didn’t turn up as scheduled. “My manager called me and wondered why I’d missed my audition,” Culkin recalls, speaking by telephone from Los Angeles. “I was like, ‘Huh? Scream 4? What?’ I had no idea it was even in existence.

“Luckily they let me go in the next day,” he says, “even though the casting director was out of town. I just put myself on tape, and then they told me I got it. That’s how it went down.”

SCREAM IF YOU WANT TO GO FASTER

Playing in UAE theatres, Scream 4 whisks moviegoers back to Woodsboro, California, the quiet suburban town where, years ago, a masked serial killer tormented Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and murdered a number of her friends, family and classmates. Now a grown-up Sidney returns to town on a book tour and – wouldn’t you know it? – the Ghostface Killer also reappears and embarks on a new killing spree.

In addition to Sidney, familiar faces include Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and journalist Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). Newcomers include a fresh batch of high-school students – played by, among others, Culkin, Erik Knudsen, Hayden Panettiere and Emma Roberts – all of whom are imperilled by Ghostface.

Culkin is cast as Charlie, the plot-minded, cliché-savvy head of his school’s cinema club.

“He’s not really the most popular dude,” Culkin says, “but then these murders start happening and they’re sort of inciting the town, and people turn to him for guidance. Suddenly he becomes powerful ... in his own mind.

“This whole group of kids, Charlie and Jill (Roberts) and Kirby (Panettiere) and all of them, sort of grew up together since they were 5,” he continues. “The girls started to develop and some of the guys, not as much. I think Charlie has a crush on any girl that moves. But they’ve all known each other a long time, and they’re thrown together again when the murders start happening.”

OLD HANDS

Campbell, Cox and Arquette are the Scream veterans, each having appeared in the previous three instalments. Though each has done many other things in the 11 years since Scream 3 (2000), Culkin reports that they quickly got back into the spirit of doing a Scream movie.

“That was interesting,” he says. “They were really nice about it. We were all not nervous, but curious about how they’d welcome us. And they were great. Even most of the crew worked on the original, and they were great too. It was a family that we were sort of stepping into.

“It had a strange 90s feel,” he adds, “because they’d all known each other for 15 years. But I think we all actually meshed pretty well. Neve was one of us. There really wasn’t any division.”

Culkin was also impressed with director Wes Craven, a horror legend who, besides the three earlier films, is best known for The Last House on the Left (1972) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

“What I was surprised about was how quiet he is,” the young actor says. “I was not expecting that. It’s really cool when a director lets you do your own thing and then comes over and just makes little tweaks. And that’s what Wes did.”

In the classic slasher movies of yesteryear, audiences could count on virgins to survive the slaughter. It has already been revealed, however, that in Scream 4 virginity is no guarantee. In other words, it’s no sure thing that the movie geek will survive the events of the film.

If Charlie does make it to the end, however, Culkin is ready, willing and able to Scream again, with Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson already signed for Scream 5 and Scream 6.

“I’m ready, man,” Culkin says. “I’m definitely ready to watch 5cream – as I call it, because they’ll probably replace the ‘S’ with a 5.” Ian Spelling,