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With: Jenna Ortega, Melissa Barrera, Courteney Cox, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Hayden Panettiere, Devyn Nekoda, Josh Segarra, Jack Champion, Liana Liberato, Tony Revolori, Samara Weaving, Dermot Mulroney, Henry Czerny, Roger Jackson (voice)
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Written by: James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick
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Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
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MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and brief drug use
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Running Time: 123
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Date: 03/10/2023
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Picking Up the Stab
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
While this slasher sequel is bogged down by complicated lore, and it's far more brutal than it is actually scary, the strong characters and an effective mystery come together to make it a cut above.
Tara (Jenna Ortega) and her friends Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) have moved to New York City following the terrible events of Scream. Tara's older sister Sam (Melissa Barrera) has tagged along and is putting a crimp in Tara's social life with her over-protectiveness. Nevertheless, they all share a house with some new roommates, and Mindy has a new girlfriend, and they are all trying to move on.
Unfortunately, the terror of Ghostface isn't finished with them yet, and they begin to experience deadly new attacks. Mindy tries to establish the rules this time, while police detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney) and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), who is now with the FBI, discover that the new killer is referencing all of the previous killers. So Tara and her friends must prepare for what they hope will be one final showdown.
Fans of this series will likely want to re-watch the previous five movies before tackling Scream VI, as it contains many, many references. In the previous movie, Scream (2022), Mindy cleverly proclaimed that they were in a "re-quel," but here her efforts to establish the rules are headache-inducing. Additionally, perhaps in an effort to ramp up the number of kills, each one lacks the suspense it might have had (with the exception of a terrific, extended sequence on the subway).
Nonetheless, filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (of the Radio Silence collective) also manage to use their 123-minute running time to more deeply explore the characters and their relationships. We can feel their trauma and their wounds, and easily empathize with them. Finally, the mystery in Scream VI is not only satisfying and clever, but it's also a logical extension of the previous movie. There actually was a good reason for another sequel; it's more than just a stab in the dark.
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