Taglines: New York. New Rules.
Scream 6 opens with the killing of a film professor, and as the body count quickly escalates, Samantha Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), her sister, Tara (Jenna Ortega), and twins Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding) prepare to escape, but they’re not fast enough for this new Ghostface.
Joined by other returning characters Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere) as well as a slew of newcomers including Anika (Devyn Nekoda), Josh (Danny Brackett), Ethan (Jack Champion), Quinn (Liana Liberato), and Detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney), the newly minted “core four” will have to face off against the killer(s) once again, this time in the heart of the Big Apple.
The kids are back, and so is the masked murderer that hunts them. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s (aka Radio Silence) newest chapter in the “Scream” franchise finds the latest generation of Woodsboro survivors setting up a new life in New York City, far away from the suburban shadow of Ghostface. Unfortunately, their peace is short-lived. This is, after all, “Scream VI.”
Scream VI is a 2023 American slasher film directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick. It is the sequel to Scream (2022) and the sixth installment in the Scream film series. The plot follows a new Ghostface killer, who begins targeting the survivors of the “Woodsboro legacy murders” in New York City.
A sixth Scream film was announced just weeks after the successful debut of Scream (2022), with much of the cast signing on to reprise their roles alongside Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s return. Filming took place in Montreal, Canada, from June to late August 2022. Neve Campbell did not reprise her role as Sidney Prescott due to a pay dispute, making this the first Scream film not to feature her. Brian Tyler composed the film’s score, with Sven Faulconer co-scoring.
Scream VI premiered at the AMC Lincoln Square Theater in Manhattan on March 6, 2023, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 10 by Paramount Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $169 million worldwide, becoming the first installment in the franchise to earn over $100 million at the domestic US box office since Scream 2 (1997) and the highest-grossing Scream film in the United States and Canada (unadjusted for inflation). It won Best Movie at the 2023 MTV Awards.
Film Review for Scream 6
here’s a moment in the uncommonly good slasher sequel Scream VI when Hayden Panettiere’s returning fan favourite character says she died for four minutes after being stabbed in 2011’s fourth instalment. That film, now viewed as a rather under-appreciated entry, killed the franchise for far longer, positioned as the start of a new trilogy but instead stopping the series for over a decade, its wounding box office proving far harder to heal.
But easy access to the series via streaming and an increased appetite for the horror genre led to a hyped resurrection and last year’s simply titled Scream became a surprise hit, re-engaging the OG 90s kids while also inspiring a legion of new bloodthirsty fans. As a legacy sequel it was only half-successful, juggling the old and the new with shaky hands, but it was good enough in a landscape where that’s more than enough, and cautious intrigue awaited wherever the franchise might go next.
As with 1997’s Scream 2, we didn’t need to wait that long with the worryingly rushed Scream VI out just over a year later, survivors re-assembling for more meta mayhem. While, as is always the case with a Scream movie, there are plenty of surprising twists in store for them and us, perhaps the biggest surprise is just how impressive the whole thing is, given both the frantic cram of production and the muddle of what came before. There are so many plates now in the air – two different generations grappling with one absurdly convoluted timeline – but returning screenwriters James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick have found a way to make the spinning feel effortless, mastering a tonal balance that they struggled with last time around.
Tone has always been key with the Scream movies, an unusual melange of self-referential snark, Scooby Doo mystery-solving, gory horror and far-fetched family soap. Unlike so many slasher sequels that focus more on the primal basics of watching someone in a mask do horrible things to anonymous young people, a new Scream is tasked with not only tackling an almost 30-year-long melodrama involving multiple families and multiple grudges but also with a need to reinvent the wheel.
Each sequel having to say or do something we haven’t seen before. While Scream VI is far less fixated on a thesis than the fifth was, it’s still clever enough to comment on franchise fatigue and the repetitive grind of trauma without feeling as didactic or as smug as so many more superficially high-minded horror films. There are brief but effective tinges of sadness (it’s the sixth film and a lot of people have died at this point) but it’s sprightly enough to not get bogged down by it, remembering the most important thing a Scream film should be is fun.
We’re out of Woodsboro for only the third time in the franchise (the second film took us to a leafy college campus, the third to Hollywood) and, like Jason Voorhees before him/her/them, Ghostface is taking Manhattan, or more accurately Montreal posing as Manhattan. Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), aka the daughter of Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich, still returning in visions, still a heinous idea), has insisted herself upon her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega), an understandably smothering presence after the two almost died months before. But before you can say the classic slasher sequel line “It’s starting again”, it starts again with bodies piling up around them, at the bodega, in an apartment building and, of course, on the subway.
What’s notable this time around is that it’s not Neve Campbell’s tortured Final Girl Sidney Prescott resignedly delivering that line because, for the first time, she’s not a part of this chapter. The star spoke out about a perceived low salary, a slight given her prominence in the franchise and how much money the last film made, and decided not to return (a strategy that will surely, hopefully, pay off with a healthy paycheck for the inevitable Scream VII).
Instead, it’s down to Courteney Cox, returning as opportunistic yet haunted journalist Gale Weathers (and thankfully given more to do this time which she does predictably well), and Panettiere’s film geek turned FBI agent to represent the older guard while Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown’s brother-sister pairing Chad and Mindy, aka nephew and niece of Jamie Kennedy’s Randy Meeks, return on the younger side.
After a genuinely surprising and horribly effective cold open, something every Scream is judged by, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett find their groove instantly, freed from the shackles of both the scene-setting of the last film and a need to be as tiresomely meta. Barrera also feels freer, overcoming some of her soapier acting impulses, and fostering a strong sibling dynamic with Ortega, again a standout. While we might have left the fifth film worried that the newer generation would ever be able to capture the same long-running chemistry as their predecessors, there’s little doubt here, the “core four” as they call themselves proving both charming and heartfelt.
It’s the second film in the new rebooted universe so bigger is seen as better with a number of brash and bloody setpieces, most of which prove suspenseful enough if never actually scary (has a Scream film needed to be truly scary since the first?). It’s the goriest movie of the series so far but without veering into grimness, again that tonal balance perfectly modulated.
The last act reveal is as goofy as one would expect but satisfyingly so for reasons impossible to explain without entering spoiler territory. What can be said is that there’s so much affection for what’s come before that it leads us to be that much more excited about what’s to come next. If further Screams can provide this much of a propulsive jolt then there’s more life in the franchise than we thought.
Scream 6 (2023)
Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Starring: Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Jenna Ortega, Hayden Panettiere, Courteney Cox, Devyn Nekoda, Liana Liberato, Samara Weaving, Dermot Mulroney, Evelyne Morissette
Screenplay by: James Vanderbilt, Guy Busick
Production Design by: Michele Laliberte
Cinematography by: Brett Jutkiewicz
Film Editing by: Jay Prychidny
Costume Design by: Avery Plewes
Set Decoration by: Suzanne Cloutier, Louis Dandonneau, Léa-Valérie Létourneau
Art Direction by: Mathieu Giguère, Philippe Lord
Music by: Brian Tyler
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: March 10, 2023
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