Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Starring: Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, Hayden
Panettiere, Courtney Cox, Jack Champion, Henry Czerny, Liana Liberato,
Dermot Mulroney, Devyn Nekoda, Tony Revolori, Josh Segarra, Samara
Weaving
Despite being a big fan of slasher movies, I've never been able to get on
board with the Scream franchise. It's chiefly because I've
never liked the whodunit format. Give me the Columbo format of
revealing the killer in the opening scene and I'm happy, as it allows me,
and the rest of the audience, to know exactly when characters are in danger,
and who from. As Hitchcock put it, if a bomb goes off it might shock the
audience but if you show the bomb counting down to its detonation you can
mine suspense and keep the audience on the edge of their seats for as long
as you want. The Scream series has always been about bombs
exploding; we never get to enjoy the countdown.
That's why I became momentarily excited by the opening of
Scream VI (after the fifth movie, annoyingly titled
Scream, I guess we're back to numbered sequels), in which the identity of the
latest Ghostface is revealed to the audience roughly five minutes in.
Finally, a Scream movie I might be able to get behind. I began
thinking about how great it would be to watch the characters go through the
usual motions of debating whom the killer might be, when we the audience can
see they're standing right there among them!!! Sadly, it's a fake-out, as this Ghostface is immediately dispatched by
another masked killer, whose identity is as always, kept secret until the
Scooby-Doo-esque climax.
It's a sign of how forgettable Scream was (the fifth one, not
the first one - man, that's annoying!) that it was released just a year ago
and yet I couldn't remember a damn thing about its survivors, who return for
this quickly turned around sequel (as Halloween V infamously
demonstrated, a year is too short to turn around a satisfying slasher
sequel). I recall Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera having
a weirdo energy that the movie never really tapped into, despite them
playing Tara and Sam, the daughters of Skeet Ulrich's killer from the
first movie. But I can't remember a thing about Cuba Gooding's kid or the
few other random skinjobs that made up the cast.
Scream VI however acts under the misapprehension that we all
fell in love with this bunch. I'm not lying when I say I literally spent
half of this movie trying to remember if Dermot Mulroney, who plays
police detective Bailey, was in the last movie. Turns out he wasn't, but the
way Tara and Sam seem so chummy with him is really confusing. Look, I'm not
suggesting you should rewatch Scream (the fifth one, not the
first one - aaarrrggghhh!!!), I'm not even suggesting you watch this one,
but you might want to visit Wikipedia to refresh your memory, or perhaps
your trauma might be more apt.
As with Scream 2, this one sees our surviving heroine now at college. In New York City no
less. Ah, so we'll be getting nods to the golden age of late '70s/early '80s
scuzzy Big Apple slashers? Perhaps a few banging disco tunes on the
soundtrack? Eh no, the only thing Scream VI has in common with
classic NYC slashers is that it's clearly shot in Canada. Well, I guess
Tony Revolori's haircut and beard does make him look a little like
Joe Spinell in Maniac.
Anyhow, Ghostface is back and out to kill the Carpenter sisters. An amusing
aspect of this franchise is how it's filled with characters who are obsessed
with horror movies yet nobody mentions how coincidental it is that they all
share their surnames with icons of the genre. Courtney Cox is back as
sneaky reporter Gale Weathers, as is Hayden Panettiere as fan favourite Kirby Reed from the fourth
instalment (my pick of the fallow bunch). Reed is an FBI agent now and at
one point Weathers remarks that she looks too young for such a job,
calling her "a child," despite Panettiere now resembling a 40-year-old Fox
News host. There's also a character who looks like a 45-year-old hitman
for the Armenian mob whom all the girls hilariously refer to as a "cute
boy."
Where was I? I don't know. It's only been a couple of hours since I
watched Scream VI and it's already beginning to disappear
from my memory banks. People get stabbed, including pre-credit victim
Samara Weaving, who steals the show as an adorably dorky film
studies professor, making her absence badly felt for the rest of the
movie. The killings are a little more sadistic here, but none of them are
remotely inventive. Knife go in, knife come out, knife go back in. That's
yer lot.
It all leads to the usual climax where the killer tells us their
motivation while we count the number of plot holes such a revelation has
now exposed. The killer reveal in this one somehow manages to be both
blindingly obvious and nonsensical. There's only one character who could
have done THAT, but there's no way they could have done THAT. The movie
also does something that the series has already done several times, yet
presents it as some sort of "You didn't see that coming!" moment. Err,
yeah, we did, because Scream movies always do this.
The highlight of the movie is watching Mulroney morph into Sean Penn over
the course of 90 minutes, and the end credits whose font appears to pay
tribute to the classic "You wouldn't steal a car..." anti-piracy ads of
the turn of the century. After ducking blades through the series, Neve
Campbell has dodged a bullet by sitting this one out.
Scream VI is on UK/ROI VOD now.
