February 6, 2000 -- "Scream 3" is the last, let us pray, of a series of three slasher movies that has gone down hill after the first movie in the series.

Reprising their characters are the survivors of the first two movies, deputy Dwight "Dewey" Riley (now a movie consultant, played by David Arquette), Sidney Prescott (now a hotline counselor, played by Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (now a junk newscaster, played by Courteney Cox), Cotton Weary (now a talk show host, played by Liev Schreiber).

A series of stabbings take place on the set of "Stab 3," the movie-within-a-movie based on the killings in the first "Scream" movie. A smooth Hollywood detective, Kinkaid (Patrick Dempsey), takes over the investigation, along with Weathers, Riley and Prescott. They begin to uncover some deep, dark secrets which relate to the murders. Meanwhile, the body count goes up and the production of "Stab 3" is in trouble.

There are some cute in-jokes, like the appearance of Carrie Fisher and Silent Bob and Jay (Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes of "Dogma"). There is also an in-joke about having three endings for "Stab 3" because they are afraid the identity of the killer will get out on the Internet (the makers of "Scream 3" banned some Internet critics from early screenings of the movie for this very reason"). Mostly, however, the movie is just a series of stabbings. It is not scary, and it isn't too hard to figure out who did it, although I couldn't figure out the motive for the killings until the end of the film.

The thing that was so good about the first "Scream" movie was the way that it played on slasher film conventions, it used them and made fun of them at the same time. "Scream 3" does that too, but the well has pretty much run dry by now. It is time to let the corpses rest in peace. Enough already. It gets a little tiring watching person after person falling into the killer's poorly laid traps. There's a killer in the house! I think I'll go down into the dark basement alone! Sounds like a great idea! "Scream 3" claims to be a trilogy, but it is really just another sequel. This film rates a C+.

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