{"id":19824,"date":"2023-03-09T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=19824"},"modified":"2023-03-09T07:50:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T15:50:06","slug":"review-scream-vi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-scream-vi\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Scream VI<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My mom worried that watching horror movies would desensitize me to violence, but the real threat \u2014 especially with ongoing, decades-long franchises like Scream <\/em>\u2014 is desensitization to these series themselves. With Scream VI<\/em>, Scream <\/em>(2022)<\/a> filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are so interested in reinventing Wes Craven\u2019s saga and keeping audiences guessing and grossed out that they\u2019ve made a film that makes no impact at all. Who\u2019s the killer (or killers) this time? Who gives a fuck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sixth outing feels more brutal than its predecessors, upping the ante with some truly disgusting kills and making sure you hear every gurgle of blood as it pours from bellies and mouths and eye sockets. Yet the stakes are somehow lower than they\u2019ve been in the past. We\u2019re literally told no one is safe thanks to the expected meta-commentary \u2014 and plenty of people die in gruesome ways \u2014 but the body count seems lower here, especially in the film\u2019s second half and especially for anyone that we might actually care about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of characters we care about, Sidney Prescott is notably absent (Neve Campbell wasn\u2019t getting paid enough to return<\/a>), and David Arquette\u2019s Dewey \u2014 acknowledged by the film itself as a \u201cfan favorite\u201d \u2014 didn\u2019t make it out of Scream V<\/em> alive. That leaves Courtney Cox\u2019s Gale Weathers as the only remaining face from the original series, but Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett bring back Hayden Panettiere as Kirby Reed from Scream 4<\/em> to keep the nostalgia level high (as if the \u201890s throwback styles of the Gen-Z characters isn\u2019t enough). Returning from Scream<\/em> (2022), the four real leads here are varying degrees of compelling this time around, with Melissa Barrera\u2019s Samantha ranking as the least interesting of the bunch, though she\u2019s supposed to be the heart of the film. C\u2019mon, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett: Jenna Ortega is right<\/em> there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the path of Scream 2<\/em>, Scream VI <\/em>finds our surviving heroes in college, but they haven\u2019t stayed close to home like their predecessors. Instead, Tara Carpenter (Ortega), Mindy Meeks Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown), and Chad (Mason Gooding) have left sunny California for some place that\u2019s supposed to be New York City to attend Blackmore University (a totally real place that exists in Brooklyn or \u2026 somewhere). The filmmakers seem to have roughly the local knowledge of someone who went to the Big Apple on their senior trip (and still call it the Big Apple). It\u2019s unclear why they even set the movie in the metropolis \u2014 beyond crafting a solid set piece that finds Ghost Face stalking through a subway car (creating one of the film\u2019s few moments of true tension).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Sam, who has tagged along with her sister across the country, is haunted by the previous movie\u2019s events (or her life or whatever). A year later, she still struggles with how easy she found it to kill that film\u2019s murderers, wondering if it\u2019s due to her genes and being the daughter of the original killer, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). Meanwhile, the conspiracy-minded corners of the internet are convinced she was the true mastermind of the Woodsboro crimes. However, Sam isn\u2019t the only one who can\u2019t move on from the past: the new Ghostface has found her, Tara, Chad, and Mindy, and the killer stalks them across a version of New York City (aka Montreal) where there are no subway transfers required to go from the Upper West Side to Long Island City. What a magical world that would be.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That kind of idiocy and lack of care is rampant throughout Scream VI<\/em>. The mystery is dumb, with the reveal more likely to garner an \u201cI knew it!\u201d than a gasp of surprise. (Though an actor under the Ghostface mask does deserve credit for being a series-appropriate level of enjoyably deranged once we know their identity.) Of course, references abound, including inevitable ones to previous Scream<\/em>\/Stab <\/em>films that threaten to fold the movie in on itself. Meanwhile, callbacks to the greatest horror movies ever only ever feel like name-dropping without any real art underneath. Sorry, dudes: mentioning Dario Argento and decades\u2019 worth of final girls doesn\u2019t mean that your movie is on that level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood flows amidst some admittedly interesting scenes, but it\u2019s largely just so boring. Mindy talks about how a sequel to a re-quel in a franchise (Jesus Christ) has to be bigger and bolder, but Scream VI<\/em> is mostly just longer, topping the two-hour mark and feeling more like a test of endurance than a movie. It starts with promise, upending the usual formula with some fun twists and familiar faces in its first sequence, but even the better, more inventive set pieces peppered throughout can\u2019t really make much of a dent in the overall dullness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many characters in its fellow slasher movies, Scream VI <\/em>is too cute and not smart enough. It winks so frequently and so insistently at the audience that you start to wonder if it\u2019s more of an involuntary twitch than a meaningful signal. While last year\u2019s re-quel brought fresh blood to the series, this sequel feels like the franchise is starting to congeal again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

D+<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Scream VI” is in theaters tonight.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moving the \u2018Scream\u2019 franchise to New York City isn\u2019t the fresh start the slasher series needs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":594,"featured_media":19826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340],"tags":[1098],"class_list":["post-19824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/594"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}