… And Scream Again
Wes Craven’s grisly, funny, meta horror gamechanger gets back to its grisly, funny, meta roots – emphasis on grisly.
Scream VI
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett • Writers: James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick
Starring: Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jamin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Jack Champion, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Segarra, Hayden Panettiere, Courteney Cox, Roger L Jackson
USA • 2hrs 2mins
Opens Hong Kong March 9 • III
Grade: B
How much you enjoy the latest in the Scream franchise will correlate to how much you remember from previous entries. Maybe not entirely, but it will help. As detailed by horror nerd Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) in Scream (AKA Scream 5), Scream VI (when did we go to Roman numerals?) is a sequel to the requel, heavily reliant on so-called legacy characters and nostalgia. But a funny thing happened on the way to a half-dozen: the second trilogy started to find a life of its own. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett reteam with writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick and, strangely, have turned in the series’ best sequel yet. It helps that this Scream feels more Cat III/R than any of the entries since the original, and the gruesome stabbings and knife twisting look good on this franchise.
A new location looks good on it too. After the bloody mess of Scream 5, new final girls Sam and Tara Carpenter (In the Heights’ Melissa Barrera and Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega) dump Woodsboro and head to college in New York. Sticking together because there’s strength in numbers, Mindy and her twin brother Chad (Mason Gooding) go with them. The change of scenery and move away from OG final girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell doesn’t show up this time) is the shot in the arm the series needs, and it can always dig up other legacy characters, like another Ghostface survivor, Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere, Scream 4), to provide connective tissue. Does it suck that Campbell declined to return because she felt the producers low-balled her on pay? Yes. Will the franchise survive her? Hate to say it, but yes.
Get ready for Scream 7
Our prologue victim this time is Laura (Samara “Not Margot Robbie” Weaving), a glaring movie target in a bright yellow dress, which is followed quickly by a fake-out that immediately throws everything we think we know about Ghostface and his/her/their acolytes into question. It’s the Halloween season in Manhattan – people seem to be dressed up for, give or take, a week – and Tara’s off to a frat party and possible date rape, much to the chagrin of Sam. Sam has her own problems, having been labelled a murderess on Twitter and now bearing the weight of social media judgement on top of her identity struggle. Lest we forget she’s the child of Ghostface #1 Billy Loomis. Aside from Mindy and Chad, their crew now includes newcomers Ethan (Jack Champion, the goddamned child in Avatar: The Way of Water), Quinn (Liana Liberato), Anika (Devyn Nekoda) and cute next-door guy Danny (Josh Segarra, She-Hulk, Arrow). Tara’s a student, Sam works two jobs, yet they live in a sprawling, natural wood-floored apartment with high ceilings and – guessing here – four bedrooms. In the middle of Manhattan…
Moving on. Despite this rental madness Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett makes the most of the urban space, diving into dark alleys and crowded subways and anonymous streets and all the sinister elements the city offers over small town Woodsboro, giving Scream VI a nice worked-over, lived-in, uneasy visual tone. They also make the most of the feels. Scream VI has all the feels. Tara and Sam deal with their traumas – or not. Kirby, now with the FBI, channels her rage into working for the law and obsessively focusing on the Ghostface killings.
Once the bodies start dropping you know reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) is going to show up, and she gets to be at the centre of a kick-ass Ghostface showdown. Rounding out the new players is Detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), who initially wonders if maybe there isn’t something to the stories about Sam being a homicidal mastermind.
Now, some of this sounds very serious and contemplative of cancel culture, the cycle of violence, guilt and loss, and it is (lightly so), but it’s a Scream film and even without writer Kevin Williamson and, duh, Wes Craven around it’s pretty funny – funnier than Screams 4 and 5. But Scream VI falls down by pulling its punches, despite the constant chatter about legacy characters running their course and no one being safe; too many of the stakes are retconned into safety. Nonetheless, and even with inconsistencies, contrivances and other moronic plot machinations, the killers expounding on their motives and processes (you know it had to be there), and being a little flabby at two hours, this is an enjoyable, entertaining and satisfying return to this world. And I have to say: Mad respect to a horror series that, after 25 years, can make a knife to the eye as cathartic as it is. — DEK