The latest ‘Scream’ film has been released to theatres.
For those looking for a quick recap and a recommendation, this film is good. It’s a fun and well-made addition to the universe with some decent emotional threads to follow and nothing that truly rings as awful. An upgrade on the last film! It understands what the appeal is on an aesthetic level, even as the emotional and franchise-related weight that the last instalment attempted to hold is mostly forgotten.
That makes it sound bad, so let me clarify that the opposite is true. ‘Scream 6’ is what happens we lose the central anchor point that is Sidney Prescott. What you’re left with is a solid slasher. The legacy is there, but in many ways, it exists as window dressing – despite one very cool set. Little is added or lost from the canon – an active choice that keeps it insular.
To put it bluntly: this is a film that you don’t have to think hard about.
3/5
Now it’s time for the spoilers.
If there is a problem with Scream 6, it’s that it’s still too reverent of its own franchise to do any good reflection. This reverence rears its head in both obvious and subtle ways through until the end, when it bludgeons you with the awful truth. This is not a film that wants to have real stakes.
Nobody died.
Nothing mattered.
It’s scared to fuck with anything too much.
To drag this back to the start, you must ask yourself what the point is of a Scream film in 2023?
We’re nearly 30 years into ‘Scream’ as a foundational horror franchise, and in many ways, the repeated returns have made it both more and less special. On one hand, this is a franchise that allegedly feeds on new trends. But the more it grows, the less poignant it feels. The trends in that currently exist in horror films are not ones the universe is built to handle, so it doesn’t bother attempting to. There is nothing akin to the grappling aging, sex, and desirability as in ‘X’ (2022), or the horrors of…honestly who knows, as in ‘Men’ (2022).
If we’re being honest, it’s got the same issue in context as the last one. There is no trend in teen focused or slasher horror that this series can deal with easily. It certainly isn’t about to go supernatural. If ‘Scream VI’ is responding to anything in horror, it is the type found in CW shows, or in the case of this franchise, as seen on VH1.
The 2022 “requel”, also entitled ‘Scream’ in a way that is incredibly presumptuous for a film that ultimately sits at the mid-bottom of the franchise’s ranking, at least set up a new tension. Whereas Sidney Prescott was a perpetual obsession, Sam Carpenter is also a threat. She’s the daughter of a killer and, by the film’s end, a killer herself. Her schizophrenic(?) imaginings of her father punctuate what is a continual tension between her fear and her rage. The tension between new and old is palpable and Dewey’s death cements it as a necessary transition in what promises to be a totally new experience. It isn’t always the most deftly handled (Skeet Ulrich showing up in reflections is…a choice) but there’s some meat on those bones.
The new film mostly ignores that meat.
This is a franchise that mostly reflects horror as a cultural force, but can also reflect internally on other, smaller terrors. It deals with what fascinates us, how fame interacts with infamy, the cultural capital of victimhood, and mostly, who is responsible for the suffering of others. The backstory of Maureen Prescott is poignant decades later in how long lasting the aftershocks of her abuse last. But in the latest instalment, we get a new outlook. The terror of simply being known and hated by millions. A hatred that is mostly manufactured but has real life consequences.
Sam is the victim of a Reddit hate mob, and the object of a murder fantasy. There’s literal fanart of her against the Ghostface mask, and strangers on the street will instigate fights for the crime of being in public – which leads to a repeatedly funny graphic of a fake looking reporter on the television. She is suspected by those who feel they know enough to judge. Much like any woman who becomes too known for their personal struggles (in this case being almost murdered) she’s become the antagonist in her own story. It’s the film’s one thematic addition to the franchise, and that is honestly enough for this film to handle.
I’ll touch on this more in my next article (shockingly written before this film put it into context) but this is, obviously, Gale Weathers’ fault. At least, it comes from her poison pen. As is every tragedy in the world of ‘Scream’ that occurs after the first film. Her inability to not share these stories makes her the catalyst to a lot of pain. She is not to be blamed for the actions of others, but she knows what the outcome is when she releases these books, and she did it anyway. Telling a story that involves others will always leave you with a responsibility to them that Gale, 30 years later, doesn’t appreciate. First Dewey got hurt, and then Sam got nearly killed.
It should be remembered that Stab, the franchise that springs from Gale Weathers’ writing, is where the iconography that haunts the core four (cute nickname, he deserved a high face) comes from in-universe.
Returning to that word franchise, the horror film cliché of the day is apparently that. We get the prerequisite ‘Scream’ monologue about “the rules”, with the Randy repeat/niece Mindy making vague gestures at what a “franchise” means today. Bigger. Bloodier. Beheadings, as her goofy jock brother Chad emphasises. Nobody is supposedly safe in a franchise, a statement she emphasises while everyone seems vaguely disinterested. But what does a franchise mean to ‘Scream’?
Not much!
For all the bluster, “franchise” as a concept seems to mean minor amounts of escalation and lots of fake outs. An admittedly fantastic opening sequence that ramps it up to 3 murders, subtly foreshadowing the three killers to follow. Gale Weathers, explicitly labelled as a goner, left alive by technicality. Two Ghostfaces, side by side, cleaning their blades in tandem from a murder that is undone by the final scene. Those three killers in on the game, tied to the last movie so that this does little to tarnish the legacy story. It repeats so much but adds so little, taking all the beats of the second film and remixing them like a mediocre tropical house DJ.
On its own, it’s surprisingly fun. Nobody is giving a bad performance (although the Kirsch family gets a trifle goofy in the end) and the set pieces work. Kirby is an especially great addition, and the way she falls back when shot weirdly got the biggest gasp out of me. It’s also bloodier and darker than before, although unlike so many films, it’s visible. The introduction of a gun in Ghostface’s hands is genuinely terrifying in a series that is so knife-centric.
But the moment you take this into the context of the – say the word franchise again with me – you’re left with emptiness. All the good guys live. There is no equivalent to the murder of Randy in this film. Gale doesn’t even show up at the end to place a button on whatever arc they had going for her. She probably should have just died!
But that doesn’t even begin to get into the emotional arcs of this film, that all have a certain, 1990s tv sheen. I can summarise in the main one. “Let me go” says the bleeding teenager, who falls on a killer’s knife, bleeding out the front and the back. It’s empowering? She can take care of herself, and she just kissed a boy.
Everything is coming up Tara!
It isn’t diminishing the film to say it’s simple. But this is the first film in the franchise that feels like it’s let go of the baggage of being meta-textually rich and weird about it. ‘Scream VI’ is an easier film to like than ‘Scream’ (2022) for that reason alone – there’s nothing offensive about the flaws. But is it really a ‘Scream’ movie without that?
If I could take a stab at what’s next for this franchise, I can only see this film being forgotten. In a franchise with big swings, this is a script that takes it safe. There are moments that will likely be remembered fondly by fans (Melissa Barrera with the gun, congratulations on the acting lessons!) but the end result is mostly empty.
The legacy is window dressing on a story that is, itself, flat
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