Scream 4 (soundtrack)

Scream 4 is the last score composed by Beltrami in the Scream franchise, as he was replaced by Brian Tyler for the fifth and sixth instalments. The initial release consisted of only 21 tracks from Beltrami's score lasting for an hour.[3] When the score was packaged in a limited edition box set, along with the predecessor's scores, the album consisted the complete score with additional cues and demos from the original score, running for more than one hour.[4] The limited edition box set was released on January 7, 2022, to coincide the soundtrack release of Scream (2022).[5][6]

Both the soundtrack and the film's score received mixed critical reactions. Gotham News commented that "This new album attempts to retain the style of the old, while speaking to the present content-diluted market. It has some success, but no cigar."[2] Shadowlocked criticized the soundtrack's overly light tone, saying that "There's little here that I would have picked for a horror movie."[7] James Christopher Monger, in his review for AllMusic, commented that the up-and-coming indie rock and pop songs resulted in a "hodgepodge of moods and styles that never quite clicks, but dutifully echoes the formless post-MP3 musical culture of 2011", giving two-and-a-half to the album.[8]

Filmtracks.com summarised that "Despite the memorable history Beltrami has afforded the franchise musically, Scream 4 is a substantially disappointing continuation of the narrative. He and four assistant composers handle the 2011 entry from a purely functional stance, tackling individual scenes with stylistic remnants of the previous scores while accomplishing absolutely nothing new."[9] In contrast, the music review site Sountrackgeek gave the score a highly favorable review: "It is possibly the best score in the Scream series, because it is so incredibly forceful. It wants to be full of action and chills and it is. It's not the scariest of scores, but Scream has never been about the moody scares, but rather the surprise scare and crazy fight/chase scenes. It succeeds and I had a blast listening to this from start to finish."[10]

• Music of the Scream franchise