Following the events of the last film, Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) have moved to New York City.
While Tara is going to university and trying to move on with her life, Sam is stuck in neutral, focused on protecting her sister and nothing else.
And then Ghostface returns…
It is a testament to how creatively stunted the Scream franchise was after Part 5 that a location change feels like a major change. Would New York be a fount of inspiration? Or would this be Ghostface Takes Manhattan?
The characters feel more defined - Sam is justifiably obsessed with protecting her sister, while Tara is trying to escape and make a new life for herself.
Maybe it was watching Parts 5 and 6 so close together, but this question popped into my head while I was finishing the Part 5 review and I could not shake it: would the movie work better if Sam and Tara were one character?
Maybe this is the effect of transposing Sidney onto the characters of this movie, but on the rewatch, Tara feels like the character who is treating the situation like a human being.
Once again, in Part 6, Tara’s drive for independence, and avoidance of dealing with trauma, feel more compelling than Sam’s visions of Billy (yes, he is back).
Maybe this is a result of bias, but while the two performers are great together, it felt like they were eating each other’s lunch in the last movie.
This movie benefits from having a more defined conflict, but Sam’s fixation on her father feels half-baked.
I wish the movie would actually throw the formula away and build a story around Sam dealing with being tied to an infamous character.
Parts 5 and 6 have great concepts - Sam realising her boyfriend is with her because of her history; online conspiracies believing that she is a murderer - but they feel like an afterthought.
The supporting cast also feels slightly more specific - at least in that they are directly involved in the story more directly.
For being part of the central friend group, the Meeks-Martin twins were a surprisingly minor part of the last movie. This time they get more to do and they feel like actual friends - Chad (Mason Gooding) is set up as a potential romantic interest for Tara; unlike her departed uncle (Jamie Kennedy), Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) has a serious relationship.
As a slasher movie, Scream VI is solid. There is a group of likeable victims, a host of potential suspects and some fun setpieces. And after the non-motive of the last movie, this Ghostface is fuelled by that old standby, revenge.
However, as a Scream movie, it still completely disinterested in its genre.
Once again this movie betrays a lack of understanding or specificity in its commentary on movies.
The big reveal this time is that the characters are stuck in a franchise, a take so tepid I could not figure out what the ultimate point of it all is.
All that being said, the movie is funnier and more inventive than its predecessor.
The opening sequence is legitimately great, and the set pieces are well-handled.
The attacks in the apartment and the convenience store are terrifyingly random - there is a genuine sense of chaos to these sequences, as the killer strikes in supposedly public spaces which turn into death traps.
Ghostface’s attack on Mindy on the subway train - a peek-a-boo involving flickering lights - is rather stylish and creepy.
There are some intentional echoes of Scream 2, but they are not as egregious as the wholesale repetition in Scream V.
The third act takes place in an old movie theatre that has been converted into a shrine to the Ghostface killers. If this is meant to be a reference to the theatre in Scream Deux, it ends up being the perfect metaphor for these nu-generation Screams:
The theatre in Scream 2 has been set up for a play about the Greek prophet Cassandra, who Sidney is meant to portray. A woman blessed with the ability to predict the future, Cassandra was also cursed to never be believed.
It is an obvious but solid allusion to make with Sidney Prescott, a woman who is cursed to repeat the same pattern over and over, unable to escape her fate as the final girl.
In Scream VI, the theatre is filled with memorabilia from all the different Ghostfaces, and footage from one of the previous killers plays on the big screen.
Whereas the franchise was previously interacting with the world around it, pulling on different sources for deliberate effect, in these new Screams, the only reference point is itself.
It is a step up from its predecessor, but Scream VI shows that the franchise remains an ouroboros, with no interest in anything outside of a vague notion of what it once was.
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