Mark Reviews Movies: SCREAM VI

Scream VI, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 10, 2023

The rebooted sequel to 1996's Scream, also called Scream in—according to the tradition of these movies—an intentionally self-aware manner, felt as if it was tapping into the modern movie landscape and film culture in a way that rejuvenated the series. The direct sequel to the not-quite-a-reboot-but-also-not-exactly-a-sequel from last year brings the series to a more by-the-numbers approach. Most obviously, it is called Scream VI, but more importantly, it's more about a series of killings and the mystery of who's behind them than finding a clever way to subvert and comment upon that formula.

First and foremost, this is a pretty straightforward slasher movie, which seems like the last thing an entry in this series, now dubbing itself a franchise, should be. That it's an effective example of that kind of horror up to a certain point is to be appreciated, of course, but such an observation is also beside the point. A Scream movie that isn't trying to be as funny and crafty as it is scary isn't quite a Scream movie.

After six installments and almost three decades with this series, these movies and their particular approach to horror are as much cultural institutions as the slasher franchises that came before the original. This series simply has the built-in capacity to stay relevant to the changing tides and tastes of movies and horror specifically, and in trying to find the direction in which to take this new cycle of sequels, screenwriters James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick seem to have forgotten the series' satirical roots.

To some degree, that's fine, obviously. It's especially true of the series' trademark opening sequence, which has more or less become the standard for horror movies in general over the past few decades. We meet a soon-to-be-killed character, notice all the signs of her impending doom that said future victim is missing, and wait for the inevitable. The initial victim here is played by Samara Weaving, and her character is an associate film professor at university in New York City. She specializes in 20th century slasher movies, by the way, but still finds herself in a situation someone with her expertise should probably avoid.

Anyway, the opening sequence doesn't end when one anticipates it will, and let's just say that the move dissects our expectations in the same way another character has been off-screen. It's a jarring, promising start, to say the least.

After that, though, the movie more or less falls into a pattern. We're reunited with Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega), who survived the reboot killers' carnage in the murder-haunted California town and now find themselves in New York. Tara has decided to move there for college and on with her life, and Sam, still traumatized by being a target for slaughter and newly confused in the joy she took in enacting violent revenge, wants to protect her younger sister.

A new killer—or, more likely, some number of killers—wearing the trademark mask is back to wanting Sam dead, along with Tara, their fellow survivor friends Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding), and any other new acquaintances/friends/lovers who might get in the way. With everyone else distracted by self-preservation or parsing the real suspects from the red herrings, the task of laying out the gimmicks and the new rules of a franchise horror movie falls upon Mindy, the standout among the new roster from the previous film. Other than a murderer's hideout that also functions as a nostalgia den filled with memorabilia, her character might be the only one who provides the series' informed sense of humor in this installment.

The jokes and satire are maybe a tertiary concern for the screenwriters and returning co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Yes, it's a bit disappointing in the big picture, especially when returning characters Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), grieving but back to reporting, and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), now an FBI agent specializing in Ghostface murders (suggesting there's a whole country filled with potential spin-off fodder), seem to exist primarily to remind us of the existence of the previous movies. The new characters are barely worth discussing, if only because they're clearly expendable as suspects and/or victims.

If we ignore all of these franchise-centric shortcomings, the filmmakers have crafted a fairly suspenseful piece of horror. There's the opening sequence, which genuinely surprises in a couple of ways—even when it does exactly what we know it will do.

An attack in an apartment has characters trying to cross the space above an alleyway with a killer pounding at the door, and a game of hide-and-seek in a bodega gives the knife-wielding menace a shotgun, which arguably makes the masked foe an even more terrifying threat. Meanwhile, a crisscross sequence on a pair of subway cars on Halloween, meaning that a few lookalike potential killers are aboard, gives one the claustrophobic sense of a rising panic attack, which transforms all of the talk about trauma into something tangible.

Can one really ignore those shortcomings, though, particularly when the third act offers a game of cat-and-mouse as generic as the motive of the killer(s)? Scream VI takes the horror element seriously, which makes for some real thrills. The filmmakers also take the rest of this material a bit too seriously, which means the movie loses its vital, satirical edge.

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