Review: Scream VI
New York. New Rules.
THE PLOT
Following the latest Ghostface killings, the four survivors leave Woodsboro behind and start a fresh chapter in New York City.
QUICK REVIEW
Scream is such an openly meta franchise that its hard not to review each film without thinking about the series as a whole. These movies all bleed together to me with only a few differences to them, and thus this might be a hard review from me because I’ve already gone on about everything I like and dislike about these movies in previous reviews I’ve done on them.
So I figured I’d get into what I don’t like about these movies first to get the negativity out of the way. They are very meta and some folks love them for that. But its always been a bothersome feature for me about these movies in a way that just makes things feel less realistic and too over the top and silly at certain points. The movies also have a mismatch of tones between horror and comedy that at times works, but other times just makes me feel a bit bothered with the story beats that those tones clash with. I also find no real characters for me to hold on to given some of the new ones introduced seem to be fodder for higher body counts in each new instalment and the ones that stick through the sequels just feel like plot devices to me. Ultimately I find these movies to be messy, unrealistic, over the top, and too meta.
BUT that doesn’t mean I outright dislike them either. Granted as you can tell from my list of negatives I’m not wild about them, they’re not part of my favorite list of horror flicks, but I also do consistently like them at the same level where there are certain movies from say the Halloween franchise that I feel significantly more negative about than others. Because even though things in these movies don’t work for me, there’s still always an interesting “who dun’ it?” factor, there’s still a few moments that get chuckles from me, and there’s still an attempt at continuity that I respect the hell out of this franchise for doing.
So as someone who finds all these movies to be about the same as one another what did I think of the new sixth installment? Well I think Scream super fans are gonna love it. Mainly because it pretty much gives you everything the other movies do.
Granted I have major issues with the way the move to Manhattan doesn’t seem to do much in changing the atmosphere of the film, how pointless one new character feels as a new addition to the group, I’m not particularly a bigger fan of the new core group of protagonists versus the ones from the earlier films, and I think this killer reveal will be one of the more underwhelming ones in the series.
When it comes down to it, these Scream movies are like junk food horror films in my eyes. And I don’t even mean that in a bad way. I don’t love them, I’m not in the number one fan club for them, but I don’t dislike them enough either. They can still entertain as a night out at the movies and especially as a binge watch of the series. Its barely in the B range for me personally, but I think for the most part this will just give the fans more of what they like.
INTIAL GRADING
