"Scream VI" Movie Review

Last year's Scream (fifth entry, but no number) was popular, so its fans will likely also enjoy Scream VI, in theaters on Friday. Unfortunately, that popularity allowed filmmakers to double down on their worst impulses.

One year after the latest Woodsboro murders, Tara (Jenna Ortega), Mindy (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) are at New York University. Tara's sister Sam (Melissa Barrera) has moved to New York to be closer to her, and Sam is overprotective.

Of course, a new pair of Ghostface assassins begin murdering people related to Tara and Sam, all referencing previous Scream movies. The last meta sequence folds in on itself so many times that it loses all ground reality.

Scream VI opens with so many imitations and twists for the new killer Ghostface that it's already breaking the public's trust. Scream IV also opened with fakes, but these were fictional films, not main characters.

Scream VI adds a touch of fan service to its previous appearances when reporter Gail Withers (Courteney Cox) appears. Gale's explanation for Sydney's absence seems downright hypocritical, considering Neve Campbell revealed that the studio refused to pay them to star in a franchise for the sixth film.

This turns the franchise's clever hook into an insufferable rant, until Mindy delivers the obligatory rant about horror franchise rules.

He's also wrong about several aspects of the franchise. Mindy names characters from other franchises as examples of how legacy characters can be lost, but many of these names survive from her later entries.

Mindy's point is correct that franchises have become too contextual, but Scream VI does nothing to reverse that. Scream VI is really just another installment that gives its characters something to do and leaves enough available for Scream VII.

Gale mentions competing against true limited crime series, but they don't pose a threat to Scream VI's killers, so why mention them? The fleeting mention of fan theories about what really happened in previous Screams is promising, but regardless of those theories, they're just hot air.

This also becomes an issue when characters from the Scream franchise make reference to the fictional Stab franchise, which includes several entries that only exist off-screen. It becomes difficult to correlate the stabbing with the six Scream films.

The problem that the last two Screams haven't adequately addressed is that the conversation around the movies has changed since the original Scream. In 1996, the horror film canon was analyzed only by true fans or scholars.

Before the internet was widely used and before social media, a movie was the only way to convey this meta message to other horror fans who would appreciate it. In 2023, Scream VI is just copying what people said on Twitter, not making observations of its own.

This is perhaps a cinematic reflection of the observer effect in physics that you cannot observe an event without affecting it. Going into part six, it's hard for a series to provide meta-commentary on a genre this franchise is an integral part of.

It's not impossible though. Creed and Cobra Kai remain high watermarks for balancing the nostalgia and moving the story forward. The rebooted comedy series tackled the self-referential phenomenon more effectively, though to be fair, it didn't in the previous five sequels.

Scream VI throws every potentially poignant topic into disarray to include every trending hashtag. There's a conspiracy team that blames Sam for framing the last movie's killer, but that's not a problem for Sam after the new killers are attacked.

Sam and Tara's reactions to surviving trauma would be a valid representation of opposite extremes. It turned out to be just a superficial setup in one scene before the characters went through the killer's childish antics for the rest of the film.

The Scream films, written by Kevin Williamson, had good dialogue outside of film theory analysis. Scream VI characters speak only in the trailers.

No one has a conversation that resolves a situation. They just shout slogans at each other.

The filmmakers use the New York atmosphere to stage harassment scenes that would be effective if they weren't burned by all the goodwill they had before.

A convenience store, nearby apartments, and subways leave characters vulnerable to attack. And the murders are just as bloody as they are in Scream 2022, which is much more extreme than the '90s movies.

Scream VI listeners will be looking for something totally different from 1996. However, they can't help but feel disdain for the original, whose quality allowed for a sixth entry.