Scream ran out of meta inspiration right around the conclusion of 1997’s Scream 2; and yet, like a typical horror franchise, it hasn’t subsequently had the good sense to lie down and die.
Resurrected last year with its original stars in tow by Ready or Not directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, the confusingly titled Scream—the series’ fifth entry—did little to update the trademark self-referential formula that was pioneered by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson.
Once again, it offered up a story that took aim at itself, a “requel” (i.e., sequel-reboot), that melded the old with the new. As it turned out, in this scenario, the fans were now the true villains! Although given the film’s lack of scares and imagination, they also proved to be the victims.
Nonetheless, with a $140 million global box-office haul, Scream confirmed the enduring viability of endlessly returning to the slasher well. Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin are thus back with Scream VI (in theaters on Mar. 10), whose main twist involves taking a page out of the Friday the 13th playbook by relocating from the sleepy suburb of Woodsboro, California, to the bustling streets of Manhattan.
It’s a wink-wink homage that feels like another act of desperate derivation designed to keep the IP afloat. That impression is exacerbated by the film’s dreary announcement that these proceedings are operating according to “franchise” rules, which—per know-it-all Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown)—means that everything is going to be bigger (it isn’t), will be the opposite of the last time (nope), and can feature the deaths of its heroes (ha!).
Since the Scream films have always both copied and subverted their predecessors, Scream VI’s blather about franchises sounds fresh when, in truth, it’s just more of the same. The snake continues to eat its own tail. Here, at least, that's in glittering New York City, where Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega) presently live and attend school at Blackmore University, with Mindy and her twin brother Chad (Mason Gooding).
Sam is seeing a therapist in order to grapple with the lingering trauma of being maiden Scream killer Billy Loomis’ (Skeet Ulrich) daughter and having killed her boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) and his partner Amber (Mikey Madison) at the end of the last sequel. Moreover, she’s upset that Tara finds her protectiveness overbearing and that a portion of the Internet believes she was the real culprit behind Richie and Amber’s homicidal spree.
While Tara wants to move on from the past and live a normal life, Sam understands that Ghostface trouble is forever, and she’s therefore not very surprised to hear TV news reports about the slaying of their cinema studies professor Laura (Samara Weaving).
In the film’s by-the-books murderous opener, Laura is felled by a Ghostface, who reveals himself to be one half of a duo planning to kill Sam and Tara, only to then fall victim to another identically masked fiend. It’s a funhouse of maniacs wielding giant blades and employing voice boxes to conceal their identity, and it takes no time for Sam and Tara to be attacked, resulting in an expertly staged showdown in a bodega during which Ghostface temporarily trades in his butcher knife for a shotgun—one of the few elements in Scream VI that isn’t rehashed from prior installments.
That encounter is one of two standouts, alongside a later subway-car centerpiece, in which the protagonists find themselves packed in with passengers who, in many cases, are wearing Ghostface (and other classic-horror) Halloween costumes. Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin know how to build and execute a suspenseful sequence.
James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick’s script, however, is woefully light on invention. Case in point: the twentysomethings are joined by Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), the latter of whom has become an FBI agent —something that seems so unbelievable, it’s a relief when Gale herself mocks this development. Fans clamoring for cameos from the dismal Scream IV may delight in seeing Panettiere, but to put her in the film’s own franchise terms, she’s akin to this series’ Ant-Man (or, more accurate still, its Wasp), and merely functions as another bland potential suspect.
Speaking of which, Scream VI stuffs itself full of secondary characters who are either bloodthirsty psychopaths or red herrings, including Sam and Tara’s “sex-positive” roommate Quinn (Liana Liberato), Chad’s nerdy virgin roommate Ethan (Jack Champion), Sam’s down-the-hall lover Danny (Josh Segarra), Mindy’s girlfriend Anika (Devyn Nekoda), and Quinn’s NYPD detective father Bailey (Dermot Mulroney).
All of them act suspiciously and yet none of them are particularly interesting, and the revelation that this unhinged Ghostface has established a lair in a derelict movie theater—decorated with memorabilia from the preceding sagas, including each killer’s mask—comes across as a half-hearted attempt to keep the material’s movies-referencing-movies spirit alive. Alas, it doesn’t, nor do verbal shout-outs to giallos and Dario Argento or a briefly spied clip of Jason Vorhees on TV.
As far as next-generation stars go, Barrera and Ortega are a charismatic and formidable pair, even if Sam’s torment—born from her fear that she may enjoy murder as much as her dearly departed dad (who once again visits her in visions)—is less than convincing, especially considering that Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin have no intention of truly turning things on their head.
Scream VI’s finale solidifies its overriding conventionality, resorting to tepid bombshells and even flatter bad-guy exposition that neuters any flickering verve. The fact that multiple characters who suffer grievous wounds wind up surviving in borderline-magical fashion—the better to keep them around for prospective follow-ups—only further proves that the film’s talk about reinvention and mortal stakes is so much hot air.
Worst of all, this sixth chapter boasts not a single genuinely unnerving jolt—a consequence of tepid writing as well as the familiarity of Ghostface’s tactics, which have long since become their own genre clichés. As a result, the smartest move made in Scream VI is the one that goes unseen: stalwart heroine Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) opting to take a vacation rather than play another rotely gruesome whodunnit game.
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