Scream 6

Well, it’s better than 5cream. But not by much. Cards on the table, Scream is not among my favorite franchises. I will say it is the most consistent in terms of quality, as there are no installments that are downright terrible. 2 suffered from a rushed production, and 2 and 3 were both rewritten on the fly because of script leaks, and 5 was just repetitious and overly smug and strangely hollow, but none of them were outright bad. Friday The 13th, Elm Street, Halloween, they all have installments better dropped in the middle of the ocean. But Scream’s whole premise, it’s very existence, is based on meta-lampshading. They call out the tropes, and then use them. It’s one of my least favorite storytelling devices. And, frankly, I think Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is a superior meta horror movie, as it isn’t stuffed up its own ass with self-awareness. But I’m getting away from my point. Scream is a solid B-tier horror franchise for me. Good, but inessential, and since the first one, I’ve yet to see one do anything but repeat the cycle. Sure, they say “this time, it’s referencing” and insert “sequel” or “reboot” or “requel” or whatever, but the story itself is really the same. And recurring characters almost always have plot armor, which means every movie is a game of watching the new characters exist to be fed into a woodchipper until the last one or two standing is the killer. The formula for a Scream movie is as rigid and tiresome as a Final Destination movie. At least Jason went to space and became a body-hopping slug demon. They weren’t good movies, but they dared something new. Scream, as a franchise, is paralyzed with fear of two things: moving on from legacy characters, and changing its formula. And Screaivi (that’s what their moronic fucking logo looks like, so that’s what I’m calling it) is just that: a slave to the formula. The killer is more brutal than ever, which is fine. But it really is just the same tired formula and the same tired story beats. Sam, one of the FIVE returning characters from 5cream, has no arc, and no growth, and it’s a shame, because Melissa Barrera is likable, but Sam is a drag. Jena Ortega’s Tara is different, wilder, more spunky, but it’s in service of Sam; she exists to be a foil to Sam’s overbearing overprotective nature, not to be a character in her own right. And that’s sad, because Jena Ortega does some fine acting here, and may be the best scream queen since Barbara Crampton, but she’s just a moon in orbit around dollar store Sydney. The twins — Jock Dude and Exposition Girl — exist. Gayle’s there. Hey, Kirby comes back, and does … mostly nothing. And is so bland and inconsequential, there’s almost no trace of the Kirby literally every Scream fan fell in love with from Scre4m. Dermot Mulroney is terrible in this. TER👏RI👏BLE. The other characters are cannon fodder. So yeah, the brutality is good, the chase scenes are well done. It does have a decent amount of intensity. It’s fine. And then act 3 kicks in, we get the killer reveal, and this movie swan dives off a cliff. I knew who the killers were no more than five minutes after the title card, so the reveal was already a deflated balloon. When you get the motivation, it is so unfulfilling, so lifeless and unoriginal, it lessens the rest of the movie before it. I think I’ve talked myself into lowering the rating here. It’s not better than 5. It’s just as infuriating. All the mistakes in 5 — the hollow “this is about this kind of movie” “commentary” that is nothing more than saying it exists, the ridiculous “they survived that?!” moments while other characters brush off wounds because plot gotta happen, the plot armor around certain characters, the infuriating and obvious choices for suspects and motivations — weren’t corrected. In fact, the makers doubled down. This is 5 in a new location. If 5 left a bad taste in your mouth, so will 6. They’re the same damned movie. And for me, they’ve run out of chances.