Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillet
Quick Impressions:
My daughter and I had the best time at Scream VI. We were so excited when we arrived at the theater. We were even more excited when we left. We loved every minute of the movie. The whole experience was so much fun.
“I think women need to stab people more,” my daughter observed in morbid glee. “There’s just something about a woman with a knife. This is better than the last one, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I said. It is better.
“How would you rank them all?” she wondered eagerly.
That’s tough. I’ve liked every Scream. The original is by far the strongest film in the franchise. But I’d say this is the best one since the original. (Word of caution, though. I’m pretty sure I said the same thing about the fifth one last year, so recency bias may be clouding my judgment.) I remember three and four as being the weakest, though they still have their moments. (Well, three is probably the weakest, and four is the one I find hardest to remember, despite its excellent cast.)
Scream VI is a solid improvement on last year’s requel. The murder/peril scenes are both more inventive and more intense. The humor works just as well, and the character development goes a bit deeper this time. I do think I slightly preferred the ending of last year’s film, but that’s just because one aspect seemed like a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood reference, and I can’t resist stuff like that. But if Scream (2022) was intended to evoke the first film, and this is offered as a callback to the second, Scream VI does find a clever way to echo the visuals and themes of Scream 2 at the end.
“Do you think it’s better because we already know the new characters,” my daughter wondered, “so they don’t have to be introduced?”
That’s definitely part of it. I like all the new characters from last year. They’re easy to care about. They’re memorable, and they’re fun to watch.
“Is it weird to find Melissa Barrera extremely attractive?” my daughter asked.
“I hope not,” I replied.
“She’s so photogenic, don’t you think?” she went on.
She is. Barrera is an immensely compelling lead. (I love her because that swimming pool song from In the Heights cracks me up so much when Vanessa sings about what she would do if she won the lottery.) Barrera’s character is much more interesting than Sidney Prescott, largely because of her backstory (and the way it keeps becoming her current story). And Jenna Ortega makes a nice co-protagonist. My daughter finds it refreshing to see sisters deepening in their bond through growing trust instead of a central love story (and complained the whole way home about not having a sister).
I’m glad that since only one original character chose to return, we get Gale instead of Sidney, simply because there’s not really room for Neve Campbell in the movie with the focus on Sam and Tara. That’s enough protagonists. We don’t need Sidney, too, and Gale is a different type of character. We do get another legacy character, though, Hayden Panettiere as Kirby. (I like the decision to work in legacy characters because there are so many the franchise could bring back. I won’t suggest any because for all you know, some of them could be back in this movie.)
My daughter was thrilled beyond belief with the entire experience, and I, too, found it very fun. She’s already counted all the Ghostfaces on the free movie poster she got at the theater, autographed the back to herself from Ghostface, and asked her dad if she can take him to see it over spring break.
The Good:
The film’s opening is strong (though slightly unrealistic at the very start). We kept whispering at the beginning. She couldn’t resist making comments to me. She was so excited. I successfully called a moment involving Tony Revolori and an appliance. She gushed in excitement, “Ooh! This is already so promising!”
He has a nice moment early on that prompted a great deal of reflection for me. Listening to him, I realized, “Sometimes I think I’m evil. But what I mean is, I feel bad. Feeling bad is not evil. There is a huge difference between feeling bad or having inadequacies, and intentionally hurting people. Those things are not the same.” (I don’t know why I get into that mindset, anyway. When other people feel bad, I never think they’re evil. It’s the most baffling, illogical thing, the way I turn on myself sometimes.)
We both love Sam, especially because she’s so tortured. Unfortunately, my daughter seems to have inherited my general sense of paranoia and hypervigilance. We relate to the character so much. As I gathered from her whispered concerns, my daughter never trusts anyone. I’m more the type to think, “Oh no, I trust people! This is surely the greatest mistake of my life. The other shoe will drop eventually. I’ll be killed horribly. I’ll deserve it.” There’s a moment when Sam castigates Tara for being at a party, and Tara objects. My daughter observed in a whisper, “I’m the other sister.”
“Me, too!” I said. “I’m the sister at the therapist’s office, not at the party.”
Then a taser gets involved, and my daughter noted, “Yep, that’s me.”
Sam’s early scene with her therapist (Henry Czerny) is so relatable. He’s like, “No, please trust me. Open up to me. Tell me everything.” And then when she does, his reaction cracked us up so much. It’s seems so realistic (or at least what you always fear when talking to a therapist).
Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown are back as Randy’s nephew and niece, Chad and Mindy. We liked them in the last movie and liked them again in this one. New to the story are Devyn Nekoda as Mindy’s girlfriend Anika, Liana Liberato as the Carpenters’ roommate Quinn, Josh Segarra as the hot guy in the next building, and Jack Champion as Ethan, Chad’s roommate.
Also, Dermot Mulroney shows up as a police detective. Not until the end credits did my daughter realize it was him.
“Aha!” she cried. “So this is the notorious Dermot Mulroney! I’ve never seen him be really himself before!” because she’s only seen him when he’s actually Dylan McDermott…that she recalls. (She knows the joke but isn’t too familiar with either actor.) (I swear back in the day, there was a third guy, too, who was also a little bit like both of them to a lesser degree. But that one never caught on as much. Who was that? My daughter jokingly suggested Dylan McKermit, like both of them but a Muppet. But I do really think there was very briefly a third guy.) (Maybe it’s just Patrick Dempsey, but that would be disappointing because his name is so dissimilar. I swear this person existed, but the internet is not helping me. Maybe it’s Mandela Effect.)
The film does a surprisingly good job of opening up possibilities about potential killers. At several moments, the dialogue becomes so pointedly awkward. “Let me tell you about one of my relatives.” “Can I just ask you about one of your relatives?” “…if you believe Person X is really dead.” We get these incredibly obvious, clunky hints about who the killer might be (because it has to be somebody!). They’re not subtle. Each one of these moments sticks out like a sore thumb. But we have no idea what’s relevant information, and what’s a red herring. Even when we’re told in Mindy’s monologue that we might be in for a rehashing of Scream 2 (the original sequel) in this sequel to a requel (which is now a franchise), we still don’t know how exactly the ending will be like Scream 2’s, or if Mindy is even right! This is all pretty well done. Instead of artfully hiding the solution, the movie opts to toss out tons of painfully obvious clues, all contradicting one another.
Best Scene:
The scene that most spoke to me is our reintroduction to Gale Weathers. I found that exchange so delightful. It’s only been one year since the last Scream, and already, Gale’s had time to alienate everyone by writing a somehow-not-legally-libelous, scandal-mongering book about them.
I don’t understand why they’re so surprised. Clearly, getting an incendiary book written about you is part of the experience of being friends with Gale Weathers. I imagine one of those online flowchart quizzes. “Is Your Friend Writing a Scandalous Book About You? 1) Is your friend Gale Weathers?” And then the arrow goes straight to, “Your friend is writing a scandalous book about you.”
They really should have known. I’m a writer myself. I’m always writing a book and find it weird when characters in movies find such behavior sinister and alarming. If I know you, and you’ve made an impression on me, you’re going to show up in my writing. (It’s really not cause for concern. A close friend I’ve written about so many times just read my latest novel and told me I have a gift for honest yet incredibly sympathetic portrayals.) But isn’t it funny how often people in movies get mad about things like this? They act so shocked and affronted. (“You’d better not be painting me right now, Vincent van Gogh!”)
Gale Weathers is a surprisingly charming character because she always acts so shocked that everyone is upset with her, and yet you know as soon as she leaves them, she one-hundred percent intends to write another scandalous book about them immediately. She’s sorry they’re mad at her, but…
I don’t know why that makes me like her so much. She never changes. (I guess that’s it. I love consistency.) It’s even funnier because they won’t speak to her, so finally, she concedes, “Okay, off the record,” which cracks me up because it reveals that before that, in her mind they were on the record, even though she claimed she was approaching them as a friend. (Part of her appeal is that she did genuinely love Dewy, but still, she just couldn’t resist the compulsion to write scandalous books about people, anyway.)
Both my daughter and I really like Gale Weathers. In fact, when we got home, she kept telling everyone, “I’m going to be Gale Weathers!”
I realized scenes like this are part of what makes me so nervous about writing non-fiction. Movie characters often see writers as such sinister figures. (When I watched Absence of Malice in high school, I had a big panic attack, fretting to my mom, “I don’t know if I can continue being on the newspaper staff! Where will this lead?”) (It’s funny because the non-fiction project I’m working on is the polar opposite of scandalous. It’s like deliberately, bafflingly scandal averse. It’s about as scandalous as a Hallmark valentine. Yet deep inside, I’m like, “Oh no! I don’t want to be one of those sinister writers!”)
Best Action Sequence:
Not surprisingly, given all I’ve just said, I was riveted by Gale’s big scene with Ghost Face. (Surely, it’s not a spoiler to say there is one. It’s partially shown in trailers.) In general, the killings/woundings in this film have been kicked up a notch in intensity. They’re all pretty gripping. Even the quick kills are fast and brutal. There’s plenty of suspense. (We were really worried about Gale. I thought, “Oh no! She’s been in the franchise since I was a senior in high school!” We were on the edge of our seats the whole time.)
Best Scene Visually:
The scene on the subway is amazing. It’s shown at length in every trailer I’ve seen, but it’s still astonishingly effective on the big screen. Setting this installment in New York was a good decision, for the subway scene alone.
The scene on the ladder is also pretty effective. I was lost in a meditation of how difficult it is to cross that ladder when you’re afraid, and how much you have to trust the people on the other side. What happens (though not unexpected) is so jarring and makes you think, “You know, it’s really so evil to murder people.”
The Negatives:
The opening sequence is not realistic. I was alternating between thinking, “I’m so glad I don’t have to date right now,” and, “Do I need to give some advice to my daughter,” when she piped up decisively, “No woman would ever do this.”
She’s completely right. I don’t know any woman who would behave the way Samara Weaving’s character does in this movie. Of course, maybe that’s to make us suspect some first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer-like chicanery.
This is a minor thing.
Also, I need to rewatch Scream 4. It’s been such a long time since I saw Kirby. She seems to have aged a lot in twelve years. (I don’t mean Panettiere. I mean the character.) She speaks as if she’s become extraordinarily jaded, hardened, grizzled. I feel like she’s overdoing the voice a little bit. Then again, she was dead for several years. Admittedly, Scream 4 is the one I remember least well. Honestly I’d be curious to see more of Kirby. (It would be cool to get a spin-off prequel about what she’s been doing between Scream 4 and now. That would even work as a TV show.)
Both my daughter and I found one new boyfriend character off-putting, but maybe that is done intentionally.
The only real issue I have is that the ending (for me) was not as exciting as the rest (until the very end). Part of the issue, though, is that there were so many delicious red herrings and tangents that I did not want to see the possibilities closed off. In that sense, any ending would have been a slight let down.
Overall:
I hope they make a million Scream movies. The core characters leading the franchise now are all compelling, and I find it encouraging that the promise of Scream (2022) was improved on in Scream VI. My daughter and I had a fantastic time. So far, this is the best 2023 film I’ve seen.