Film: Scream VI

GENRE: Horror
RATING: R for bloody violence & language
RUNTIME: 2 hours and 3 minutes
PLATFORM: Movie Theatre
STARRING: Melissa Barrera (Scream V, In the Heights)
Jenna Ortega (Wednesday); Courtney Cox (Friends, Scream)
DIRECTORS: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Scream, V/H/S)
WRITERS: James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Amazing Spiderman)
Gary Busick (Scream V, Ready or Not)
PLOT: The survivors of Woodsboro are now in New York City and still being terrorized by Ghostface.    

FULL DISCLOSURE: This is only horror franchise I watch.            

STORY STUFF: Scream VI is fun with its meta horror antics. It sticks to its formula of big murder at the start, a run-down of the rules, lots of chases around rooms, and a big location for the final showdown. Of course, there are twists put in to add to the fun. I always like the mystery of who is behind the mask. There were a few things that bothered me. Too many people are surviving multiple knife wounds. Why does someone have a gigantic ladder in their small apartment? Why don’t characters text instead of calling? Characters should really spend more time on Ancestry.com. I would hope that after someone killed a bunch of people in say an Austin Powers mask, the city would stop selling Austin Powers masks, for a little while at least.    

ACTING STUFF: Barrera and Ortega play the heroines well though it is hard to separate Ortega from Wednesday Addams at times. Cox keeps falling into the same Gale Weathers patterns but that’s fine for a legacy character. I found Henry Czerny (Mission: Impossible) as odd casting. I enjoyed newcomer Jack Champion (Avatar 2) but got tired of Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding) pretty quickly.

ARTISTIC STUFF: For a film touting New York as its locale, there were only a couple scenes that made good use of it: a bodega confrontation and the subway. I guess Ghostface can’t be killing people in Times Square. There’s not much to say about the artistic stuff. The sound effects of the stabbings were well done?     

VERDICT: Three and a half stars out of five
SEE IT IF: You’ve seen the other Scream films.
UPCOMING REVIEW:  John Wick IV