Review: 'Scream VI' takes Ghostface to Manhattan, for some effectively staged mayhem and pointed movie commentary.
The most surprising thing about “Scream VI” is that a horror franchise that is forcing you to count installments on your other hand can come up with anything surprising at all — which this solid, true-to-the-premise slasher does.
After the traditional opening celebrity kill — nice to see you, Samara Weaving, even if it’s just for a few blood-curdling moments — we get to our main characters. These are the four survivors of the fifth movie, called just “Scream,” from last year. They are Samantha Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and younger sister Tara (Jenny Ortega), and twin siblings Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding). The four have all moved to New York, where Tara, Mindy and Chad have started college in New York, and Sam watches over Tara to the point of suffocating her social life.
Sam is trying to deal with the aftermath of the last movie, which ended with her killing the last Ghostface, Richie Kirsch (Jack Quaid, seen here in flashbacks). Now, though, internet rumors have prompted the conspiracy theory that Sam is the real murderous mastermind, orchestrating kills in an effort to top her father, the original Ghostface, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich).
(Side note: It can’t be coincidence that Sam’s last name references “Halloween” director John Carpenter, the king of the slasher flick — and that if Sam used her family name, she would be Sam Loomis, the name of Michael Myers’ nemesis, played by Donald Pleasance, in the “Halloween” franchise. I missed the last movie, or I would have caught that earlier.)
With another Ghostface on the loose, Sam gets even more concerned about protecting Tara, and her friends Mindy and Chad. She’s also trying to explain stuff to her therapist (Henry Czerny), which goes badly — and is seeing the hunky neighbor, Danny Brackett (Josh Segurra), on the sly.
After the first few bodies, the movie gives us a meeting of the roommates — Sam and Tara’s roomie Quinn Bailey (Liana Liberato), Chad’s roommate Ethan (Jack Champion), and Mindy’s girlfriend Anika (Devyn Nekoda) — to figure out who is trustworthy and who might be a suspect.
Also, Mindy, the film student of the bunch, observes that the killer isn’t following the rules of a horror movie, or of a sequel. This is a franchise now, and a franchise has its own rules. The most important rule: All bets are off, and anyone can be the killer or the next victim — even legacy players, like reporter Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox), who’s been on this case since the first movie, or “Scream 4” final girl Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere).
Kirby, by the way, is now an FBI agent who comes to New York to assist the lead NYPD investigator, Detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), who’s also Quinn’s dad.
That’s a lot of characters to keep track of, and that’s not factoring in how the script drops names of the previously deceased (like David Arquette’s Dewey) or, in the case of Sidney Prescott, conveniently offstage because Paramount wouldn’t pay Neve Campbell what she freakin’ deserves. And writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick also have fun with the trope — previously used by Jason Voorhees and the Muppets — of moving the action to Manhattan, where safety in numbers doesn’t necessarily work like the characters hope.
The directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who made the fifth “Scream” and the tricky “Ready or Not” (which starred Weaving), build the suspense well and regularly find the right buttons to push to keep the audience on edge. They also get good work out of the talented cast, particularly Barrera (who sang and danced in “In the Heights”) and Ortega (now in the meme-generating “Wednesday”), who keep their squabbling sister routine as the movie’s through line between the knife attacks.
“Scream VI” is about 15 minutes longer than it needs to be, and some of the “kills” feel repetitive. But overall, it’s a good edge-of-the-seat horror thriller with twists of the knife that will unsettle and surprise viewers — much like the original did.
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‘Scream VI’
★★★
Opens Friday, March 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, and brief drug use. Running time: 123 minutes.