Scream 6: A Good Sequel For Scream Fans

The Scream franchise is designed to be a meta-discussion of horror movies. They take the tropes of the movies, deconstruct them, and then reconstruct them into something new that both honors and subverts expectations about what historically would happen within a movie like that. Last year’s Scream V took this a step further and applied that rule to legacy sequels across all genres to moderate success. The problem with Scream VI
is that it takes the same meta-approach that the previous entries do, however, it applies them to the rules of Scream movies so the movie works well for fans of the franchise but less so for those who do not come in with that nostalgic attachment.

Scream VI picks up where its predecessor left off and follows Sam and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) as they leave Woodsboro and move to New York City as Tara begins college with her friends and fellow survivors Chad and Mindy (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown). While living in New York, they encounter a new killer targeting the survivors of the Woodsboro legacy attacks (as seen in Scream V) and attempting to hunt down the four. Courtney Cox, Hayden Panettiere, Samara Weaving, Tony Revolori, and Dermot Mulroney also star.

The movie does have a lot of good things working for it. Because it is a sequel, the cast has more time to gel and work on their chemistry so they feel like a more cohesive unit in this film, especially when compared to Scream V. On top of that, the slasher action and gore are some of the franchise’s best which will be something worth watching for more casual horror fans who may not be the deepest fan of the franchise itself.

It is good that the movie executes on that level because the rest of the film is very much designed to be a love letter to the franchise as a whole. Elements from the previous five Scream movies tie into the plot of this one in a way where if someone is a more casual fan, they probably will not get as much enjoyment out of the movie as they got out of Scream V. Conversely, a more die-hard fan will probably find this movie better than its predecessor because of the level of fan service used in the movie. In a weird way, it is kind of the same as the Disney+ Star Wars shows where the enjoyment level varies from season to season based on how much enjoyment they got out of (or cursory knowledge they have of) the EU materials.

That said, Scream VI is not a bad movie and has a large number of serviceable moments across its franchise-record runtime. A viewer who loves Scream will definitely love this movie, however, someone who is a little less well-versed in the history of the franchise will probably find less to click with, even if the horror elements work better here than in the previous movies. Regardless of where one falls on that spectrum, it is worth a watch.

Final Rating: 8/10