Spoilers don’t like answering phones anyways.

It’s supposed to be different, but then this franchise has always aimed to be different. As much as it has defined itself as a “meta whodunit” all movies have a similar pattern, even when they break it. The heroine is always publicly ostracized, any characters can be killed and getting killed does not always means dead. I’m not going to go into the full scary movie meta analysis because the movie already does that. It works better if you haven’t seen the series in a minute.

(Credit: Paramount Pictures)

Scream VI (2023) is Matt Bettinelly-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. The script was written by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick based on the original characters created by Kevin Williamson. The director of the original was the legendary Wes Craven (1939-2015). New(ish) leads Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara (Jenna Ortega) have left Woodsboro along with siblings Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown). It doesn’t take long for someone else to done the Ghostface mask and start killing people around them.

Coming back from the original movie series are reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), now an FBI agent. To its credit, the movie tries to subvert the original by giving Ghostface a more violent edge than before. The other cliche features are also where. Any coincidence, mistake or accidental mishap all are easily exploited by the killer with an almost omniscient knowledge. That still gives Ghostface an unfair advantage and almost supernatural nature.

It works as long as you play along. We’re still in a movie who knows it’s a movie, or at least a movie where the killers follow movie rules. I have to argue that it’s more like world surrounding the films follow these rules, but that’s me being a buzzkill. Overall, there is no subversion to the original concept enough to call this a new concept, but that’s ok. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel here.

Recommended with popcorn for horror fans. Scream fans will miss Neve Campbell, but otherwise it has all the elements that have always made a Scream film. The filmmakers have given the killers a more violent, even supernatural demeanor that works just up to the reveal. There’s a moment where the masks are off in which the fear subsides altogether. Worth a watch if you haven’t watched the franchise in a while.

That will do for now.