Scream VI

Matt Bet­tinel­li-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Scream VI opens with a phone call. This is like every Scream film, a fran­chise that start­ed as a know­ing post­mod­ern take on the tropes of the slash­er movie in gen­er­al and the Hal­loween films in par­tic­u­lar, but quick­ly became a know­ing post­mod­ern take on its own post­mod­ern tropes. 

There is always an open­ing phone call, always the Ghost­face Killer’s syn­the­sised voice (always Roger L. Jack­son) arch­ly ask­ing ques­tions about ​‘scary movies’. Of course there are oth­er in-house rules, such as the over­pro­tec­tive atti­tude towards a small core of key char­ac­ters who may get griev­ous­ly injured and bear scars, but almost nev­er get killed (the loss of lega­cy char­ac­ter Dewey in Bet­tinel­li-Olpin and Gillett’s pre­vi­ous ​‘requel’ was the exception).

Even fran­chise pro­tag­o­nist Sid­ney is not dead but just on leave until the pro­duc­ers can nego­ti­ate an equi­table actor’s fee for Neve Campbell’s return. Half-sis­ters Sam (Melis­sa Bar­rera) and Tara Car­pen­ter (Jen­na Orte­ga) and twins Chad (Chad Good­ing) and Mindy Meeks-Mar­tin (Jas­min Savoy Brown), all next-gen rel­a­tives from prin­ci­pal char­ac­ters in Wes Craven’s 1996 orig­i­nal, are now a ​‘team’ and even – in shades of the Fast and Furi­ous fran­chise – ​‘fam­i­ly’. Typ­i­cal­ly the solu­tions to the sequels’ masked mys­ter­ies are also relat­ed to fam­i­ly, fan­dom or both.

Then there are the lit­tle dif­fer­ences. The call at the begin­ning of Scream VI is for films stud­ies asso­ciate pro­fes­sor Lau­ra, who, far from being in the Scream films’ epi­cen­tre of Woods­boro, is wait­ing for a date in a swanky New York restau­rant. Indeed, the rest of the film will unfold in the Big Apple, where Chad, Mindy and Tara are attend­ing Black­more Uni­ver­si­ty, and where a fel­low stu­dent, sig­nif­i­cant­ly named Jason (Tony Revolori), will be seen watch­ing Rob Hedden’s sim­i­lar­ly New York-set sequel Fri­day the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Man­hat­tan. In a sign that Bet­tel­li-Olpin and Gillett are putting their own stamp on the series, Lau­ra is played by Sama­ra Weav­ing, the final girl of their ear­li­er Ready Or Not (although here very much the first to die) – and one unmask­ing comes dis­arm­ing­ly early. 

Still, this is most­ly busi­ness as usu­al: a Ghost­faced ser­i­al killer with an inti­mate knowl­edge of the Woods­boro mur­ders is cir­cling in on Tara and Sam. Old char­ac­ters, both liv­ing and dead, resur­face, while new char­ac­ters are con­tin­u­ous­ly added to the list of poten­tial sus­pects or vic­tims. Mindy may make a speech about how in a ​‘requel sequel’ like this none of the old rules apply any­more – but real­ly they do, as James Van­der­bilt and Guy Busick’s screen­play stays remark­ably true to the franchise’s now estab­lished norms. Even the red her­rings are now a fixed part of the Scream menu. 

Scream VI is well-made, fast-mov­ing and often painful­ly bru­tal, while pep­pered with the kind of sassy, savvy dia­logue that has always been a hall­mark of the fran­chise. Yet while this, like all of the Scream sequels, might keep you guess­ing who­dun­nit and why, the cli­mac­tic, con­vo­lut­ed reveal hard­ly seems to mat­ter in com­par­i­son to all the thrilling slash and dash that lead to it. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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