Review: SCREAM VI

A young woman waits for her app date at the bar of a restaurant. He's late but he texts her about it and then she calls. He can't quite make it. Keeping the call going she goes to investigate. This is a Scream movie. What do you think happens? After an extended and-service-heavy prologue we join the gang from the previous entry (called Scream in convention with other requels like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw except that it was really a sequel and .....). Right, so everyone's now at uni and having fun at parties and studying when they can and then Ghostface drops by and mayhem.

Where there are plenty of cute moments in earnest slashers from the '80s that do it, 1996's Scream was the one that consolidated the notion that the teen victims of slasher movies might be more than literate in those teen-targeted movies. Scream and all the sequels that sailed in her have made a point of this. This time we get a mega meta lecture about franchises that also serves as a count-keeping scene on who is and isn't suspect. It's so peppy and energetic that it means that we had better be in for something exactly like the character is describing or we'll have a deflating failed attempt at cute. So, how'd we go?

The characters are drawn knowing the audience knows that they were struck from stock. They are, however, well written and well cast and benefit from their appearances in the previous entry. From Courtney Cox to Jenna Ortega we get a good spread of lineage and everyone does enough more to lift their characters a notch over Victim-in-Alley. This needs to be the case because they are representing their team in cinema history.

The Scream franchise has fared better than most in reception and reappraisal. It was one of Wes Craven's numerous game-changers and worked because it blended black comedy with genuine suspense and violence so deftly that it usually gets left off lists of horror-comedies that work and placed in the legit slasher column. That means new entries have to do both as well and as well. So Scream II had a scene where a class of kids talk about sequels and so on until this one's big thing about franchises and why they figure and scenes and dialogue which seriously blur the worlds of Scream and Stab (the film series within Scream). This later supplies the film's funniest line.

But self-reflexivity can only go so far in making one of these. There are a lot of Scream fans to serve and they are well assumed to get someone with an Argento title on his T-shirt (in Italian) and the depiction of cast members from Scream movies appear as exhibits in the museum of Stab until the whole film feels like it's going to implode unless someone bounds in with a hunting knife. Well, that keeps happening. And the cute keeps happening. It's a clever wink to have Samara Weaving as the prologue girl speak in her normal Australian accent as she really might not be around the whole time and there won't need to be a single line of dialogue to explain why she isn't American. Later, in a train filled with people decked out for Halloween we see someone dressed as her armed bride from Ready or Not (speaking of fun horror-comedies).

Now that I've mentioned that scene, it's worth pondering where VI falters. The trailer for the movie was a boil-down of the subway sequence and was white knuckle tense. The scene itself is superbly staged but suffers from anti-climax. The suspense in an early scene that mixes pursuit by Ghostface and a shaky ladder is sweatingly tight. Then, in a crowded subway carriage filled with people who look like they are from real horror movies (including many Ghostfaces and a nice Midsommar reference) and flickering light, the action seems curiously subdued. It lifts, and well, but most of it has felt like waiting rather than tension. The talky confession scene (not a spoiler, they're at the end of every one) feels like it goes forever and only when the action starts again and we freely acknowledge (silently, of course, in the cinema) that we didn't care at all about most of the details that the cast deliver with near-pantomime glee.

But then the action bursts back in and we remember why we like Scream movies. It made me think two things: yeah, but it's still not the first one, and, I only think that because I saw the first one fresh, before it had any sequels so its impression is never likely to be eclipsed by a sequel. For people as young as most of the cast (and intended audience) Scream VI is another tile in the streaming service screen that might as well be episodes of a brand-produced show. If you binged all the Screams you'd finish this one happily enough (happier, I'd bet, than if you went through all the Friday the 13ths or Halloweens). As the default position for these movies is heightened (I don't mean elevated!) thrillers, all they have to do is deliver. It's easy to forget that among the references that so pleased those of us who saw the first one first. But Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson (who wrote that and so much else in the '90s self-reflexive teen horror of the time) were not hacks but master crafters of their corner of the genre. So, rather than ask if this is as good as the first we might more helpfully wonder if it at least ticks the boxes. Given the smarts of the franchise that means a world more than usual. Wink!