SCREAM VI (2023) **

Scream VI continues the great horror movie sequel tradition of setting your sequel in New York City and then doing absolutely nothing with the concept of setting your sequel in New York City.  Like Friday the 13th Part VIII:  Jason Takes Manhattan, Ghostface doesn’t hack people up in The Empire State Building, stab victims at The Statue of Liberty, gut teenagers at Yankee Stadium, or splatter someone’s brains all over Broadway, which is bullshit if you ask me.  In fact, the only sequence that really feels like it’s set in New York, is the subway scene you’ve already seen in the trailers.  

I guess this wouldn’t matter if the film had a strong hook.  All the previous Scream movies skewered the concept of horror movies, sequels, remakes, and “requels”.  This one never decides what its intended target is.  When the movie nerd gives her big speech, she says the murderer could be following the pattern of Scream 2, or maybe sequels to requels (since this is basically the second film with the “Legacy” cast) or even franchises, but the killers never follow through with either pattern.  In fact, one of them even says, “Fuck the movies!” at one point, and you have to wonder if the filmmakers didn’t feel the same way as this is probably the most soulless (but not worst… that would be part 4) entry yet.  

The opening sequence is rather strong though and suggests an interesting concept the rest of the film never follows up on.  I don’t want to give too much away as it is the most worthwhile scene in the whole movie.  All I’ll say is that if the killers continued going after their own copycats, it could’ve been a neat meditation on the assorted rip-offs and cash-ins that litter the slasher genre.  Unfortunately, the movie never commits to this intriguing idea.  (This sequence, while having a clever twist, loses points however for being a criminal waste of Samara Weaving.)  

There was some pre-release talk about this being the goriest Scream yet, but I have no idea what they were going on about.  Other than a knife to the mouth scene, there’s a fair amount of blood, but nothing remotely gory.  Actually, this movie might set a record for how many times someone gets stabbed and DOESN’T die.  I mean, I think the body count is only about five or six because the kills are so fucking weak that they don’t even register as kills because the person survives.  All this wouldn’t matter if the suspense scenes (aside from the opening) weren't so watered down and routine.  I did like the killers’ shrine though, which looks like a Scream version of a Planet Hollywood.

The absence of Neve Campbell (who held out for more money and got shot down) is sorely felt here.  She wasn’t given much to do in the last one, but her presence at least made it feel like a legit Scream movie.  Courteney Cox is still around, although in a limited capacity, and (to make matters worse) she basically does the same shit she always does in these movies.  That is to say, write a book, get punched, and then grudgingly help out the rest of the cast solve the killers’ identities.  With Neve nowhere to be found and Courteney stuck with a reduced role, it’s up to “The Core Four” to shoulder much of the movie.  While the new cast members did an OK job in the previous Scream, the screenwriters do very little to make them memorable this time around.  You know it’s a desperate move when they bring Hayden Panettiere, the most forgettable character from the most forgettable Scream back.  (Yet another person who got stabbed and didn’t fucking die.)