Scream VI review: Bright knives, big city
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Warning: This review contains spoilers about the opening scene of Scream VI.
When horror franchises head to New York City (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, but don't bother with either of them), it's basically a sign that the building has been condemned. Decent scares do come out of the five boroughs, but those American psychos tend to be less Ed Gein, more neurotic and urban-derived.
Call it a small miracle, then, that, before smoothing out into a blandly excessive stabfest, Scream VI hatches a few creepy jolts in its first few minutes. (Spoiler!) Per longtime formula, a woman (Samara Weaving, the raw-boned survivor of co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's superior Ready or Not) gets a phone call, but she's waiting at a restaurant's bar for her Tinder date, surrounded by people, hardly at risk.
Still, the voice cajoles her outside, across the street, into that dark alley, and you see how the concept could be made to work, even if we're already way smarter than it. Don't call it a spoiler, either, when, after she meets her date (it's a quick one), he pulls off his Ghostface mask to reveal himself (hello, Tony Revolori from The Grand Budapest Hotel, still innocent-looking). Is this to be a new kind of Scream, one in which we know the sweet-faced killer in advance?
Ghostface in 'Scream VI.'
Of course it isn't, and the double death whammy has a perverse kick to it, raising plot expectations to an unfair degree. Scream VI ultimately squanders the goodwill of last year's occasionally satisfying reboot (a rampaging Neve Campbell bowed out of further participation), slackening into a dutiful merry-go-round of returning characters. Chiefly, there's Tara (Wednesday's deadpan Jenna Ortega in an underwritten role), enrolled at fictional Blackmore University, her overprotective older sister, Sam (Melissa Barrera), busy ruining Tara's first year away from home, plus a clutch of chatty over-explainers and fresh nobodies. Every time the movie brings on another cast member — including a lunging Courteney Cox — it feels less like a horror movie and more like a soap opera with serrated edges.
None of them are safe (you knew that), not in a bodega, not on the subway, not in their apartments. It's a movie in which the actual city doesn't register, like a Friends episode: The One With the Relentless Stalker. Splattery, puncture-heavy violence — the hard-R rating is earned — alternates with deadening rafts of therapy-speak, including an actual therapy session. But there's no deeper meaning to any of it; the Scream idea, meta to its core, was always a preening celebration of its own cleverness, never mind the occasional half-explored nods to toxic fandom or cancel culture. When the final showdown goes down, in a museum filled with artifacts from the other films, you'll realize that such a hall of mirrors will never be built. No one loves these movies quite that much — not as much as the movies love themselves. Grade: C+
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