Movie Review: Scream VI
Scream VI takes the Scream franchise to a place it’s never been before: cross country to New York City. Usually taking place in the fictional Californian city of Woodsboro (except for Scream 3, which took us to a Hollywood film set that resembled Woodsboro), going to New York seemed like the next logical step in a horror franchise that has been going on for nearly twenty-five years. We’ve seen Friday the 13th do it in Jason Takes Manhattan, we saw Freddy Krueger go from the suburbs of Ohio to Los Angeles in New Nightmare, so this isn’t anything new in the horror genre.
But save for a few shots of the New York skyline, Scream VI never felt like it was in New York and felt like it could have been set in any city with a subway system and large buildings. There was no scene of Ghostface chasing his latest victim through Time Square or a showdown in Central Park. It just felt like it was set in “Big City, USA”.
This is just a small quibble in a film that I overall liked very much. Despite never feeling like New York, Scream VI does showcase the lack of awareness that is often seen in a big city. I live near Chicago and lived there a couple of times, and the hustle and bustle of a city the size of Chicago or New York are very different than a city in the suburbs or even a small metropolitan city. People are usually focused on getting where they need to go and what they are doing. Everyone has their headphones in their ears and their faces in their phones, so it’s completely plausible that someone could be getting stabbed on a subway or be screaming for their lives in an alley and nobody would hear or acknowledge that anything was happening. The idea of the killings in Scream VI happening in a city surrounded by millions of people and none of them noticing is a very real thing and pretty horrifying to think about.
Other than taking the franchise to a different location, Scream VI is just like every other Scream movie, which for other franchises would be a bad thing, but for the Scream franchise is completely fine. Through the six films of the Scream franchise, they have perfected their structure and what their films are. Though not nearly as scary and menacing as the first couple of films, the Scream films are just hyper-violent whodunnits. They are mystery movies where we are trying to figure out who the killer or killers are and how they are connected to our main characters. As the movie goes on, people we think might be Ghostface get killed off and we are left mostly surprised by who the killer or killers actually are.
As explained in the film by Mindy (Jasmine Savoy Brown), the film-buff, horror-aficionado who seems to get everything wrong about who the killers are and what they are going to do, Scream VI is a requel (a reboot sequel), and the characters are living in a requel. Mindy explains the rules of a requel: legacy characters, like Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), making her triumphant return to the franchise after we all thought she died in Scream 4, and main characters like Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega), Mindy, and Chad (Mason Gooding), or the Core Four as Chad names them, aren’t safe from death. All new characters can’t be trusted, which makes characters like Chad’s roommate Ethan (Jack Champion), Sam and Tara’s roommate, Quinn (Liana Liberato), and Sam’s new crush Danny (Josh Segarra) immediate suspects. The kills are more elaborate, the scenes of the killings are longer and more drawn out, and everything will feel like a remake of the sequel to the original film.
All of this is true in Scream VI. There is more of a sense of dread for our main characters. Because we have seen new characters be killers before in the Scream films, we don’t trust anyone we haven’t met yet. The scenes of our characters getting attacked by Ghostface are longer and more intense. The kills are more grisly and some of the deaths are shocking and surprising. And the film takes a lot from Scream 2, like the date night opening or the college setting, or the finale taking place in a theater. Even the killers are vaguely reminiscent of the killers in Scream 2 (I’m not going to say how, but when they are revealed you’ll get it). Scream VI is aware of what it is, but it uses smart and crafty writing to subvert our expectations and make an entertaining and thrilling film.
Scream VI allows for the Scream franchise to continue, and I hope it does. I love the structure of the films, the mysteries, the kills, and the way the franchise continues to reinvent itself as the horror genre changes.
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