When going to see “Scream 4,” audiences would expect to spend a portion of the movie screaming. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.  At all.

My expectations were set high for a thrilling movie that was supposed to scare me out of my seat, but what I got from the movie was humor instead of terror.  If the movie was originally advertised as a comedy, I probably wouldn’t have seen it.  When I came out of the theaters laughing instead of frightened, I was more than disappointed.

“Scream 4” failed to live up to the previous “Screams’” successes.  In the opening of each “Scream” movie, the typical scene is where someone is about to be murdered.  This time, “Scream 4” brought a new idea to the set. 

Right when the killer was about to commit murder, instead of hearing the rasping voice on the phone, a text message was sent.  Although this may be modernized and appeal to teens, it doesn’t have the same effect.

While Hayden Panettiere’s character receives a phone call from the so called killer, instead of a simple “what’s your favorite scary movie” and then hanging up the phone, she proceeds to answer the question listing recent movies such as “House of Wax,” “Halloween,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” etc.  I found that rendition to the famous line, not scary at all. Whether it was the fact that Hayden Panettiere’s acting has been lacking since her famous role in the cheerleading movie, “Bring it On: All or Nothing,” or she simply cannot deliver a scary persona, I was not impressed.

Compared to all of the sequels of “Scream,” this one just didn’t continue the same tradition.  There comes a time when too many sequels are made and the producers don’t seem to know when to stop, making the storyline become boring and overused.  It brought nothing new to the series, and it all seemed like one giant cliché. “Scary” house murders, missing people, haunted farmhouse; each scene in which a murder took place simply had me laughing at the simplicity of it all, instead of shedding tears of terror.

The movie had a lot of potential with leading actors such as Lucy Hale, Hayden Panettiere, Shenae Grimes, Dane Farewell, and Anna Paquin, but they all failed to deliver a scary effect, just like the movie itself.

Megan Battaglia is a Multimedia Editor for “The Patriot” and jcpatriot.com.