Scream VI

Unlikely that anyone expected Scream to go to six films with a longish break between 4 and 5 and crucially maintain quality and still feel progressive. Which is the key to any long running franchise and were Friday 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street stumbled (We’ll put Halloween to one side for now.) having gone to reboots rather than apply the hard work of taking the original series forward.

Shifting Scream VI to New York has led to imaginative posters but other than the odd shot of the famous skyline at night this is Jason Takes Manhattan territory in that the city isn’t used to its full potential. And there are familiar tropes of the series such as the opening kill, the voice and survivors from Woodsbro.

Very basically as there’s a lot in the film that is worth going into blind. We are down to the self-titled ‘core four’ survivors from Woodsboro: Mindy (Jasmine Savoy Brown), Sam (Melissa Barrera), Tara (Jenna Ortega) and Mindy’s brother Chad (Mason Gooding), plus the appearance of Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) once the killings start of the various friends they have made in the city. As the bodies pile up so the tension between the sisters does which is very well played by Barrera and Ortega.

There’s the predicable lecture on the meta and actions of victims and killer, which as usual comes over as patronising but also has some insight into the writers and crucially corporate thinking with here which tends to suggest that under the right circumstances this franchise could go on forever. That’s fine and the groundwork has been successfully laid for that. I think I’m safe in saying (and viewers will expect) that it is continuity heavy, that may go over the heads of more casual viewers.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, are well into their stride with this franchise and the direction is now clear. The audience will come to expect an introductory kill, logical twists and turns as the bodies pile up. And that having some things in their back pockets as in yes main characters get stabbed, badly and off-screen and there’s one notable absence but never say never.

As to the violence, Scream has always been one of the more brutal mainstream horror series. There’s no let-up in that department, in fact it may have intensified in this film with some very nasty, very stabby attacks that are grim however slickly filmed they may be.