Scream VI

This is a hard one to review, because while I enjoyed watching it , I cannot deny it has many problems. It hinted at things that were better than what it ultimately delivered. It had some truly new and interesting ideas but none of them were ever fully explored.

Here's a few without spoiling too much, it is hinted in the opening that this Ghostface is a vigilante. I LOVE that idea. How original would it have been for Ghostface to be coming after Sam and Tara because whoever has taken up the mantle believes the conspiracy that Sam was responsible for all the deaths in Scream 5. That would have been a really original, fresh take on the character. A Ghostface who would tear through New York City doing away with all the cheap imitators who are after Sam and Tara inadvertently defending them until in the third act where it goes in for the kill. A Ghostface who's motives we could understand and even to a certain degree justify.

I don't know about you but that's the movie the opening promised me. Instead what we got was an enjoyable yet flawed retread of Scream 2 set in New York, with one of the worst if not the worst killer reveals of the entire series. The ending has some great things about it, the villains were not one of them. Seriously you'll guess the killers as soon as they're introduced.

It was also hinted in this film that it could potentially be Stu Macher under the mask, now, I'm what you call on reddit a Stu-truther. To me Stu and Billy are Ghostface. I want Matthew Lillard back in a Scream movie and while this film doesn't feature Sidney Prescott as Radio Silence rudely refused to pay the literal scream queen Neve Campbell the money she's rightfully owed, it still would have worked with Stu returning to kill the bastard child of Billy Loomis. This doesn't happen. Stop dangling the Stu carrot in front of my face franchise and give me Mathew goddamn Lillard back!!!.

So, my rant aside, I said the film was a good time and it is, largely because of the strong performances of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega alongside their supporting cast of Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mindy Meeks and Mason Gooding as Chad Meeks. Mindy is a very solid replacement for Randy and Mason Gooding is charming and an all round likeable character. Melissa Barrera redeemed herself in my eyes in this entry, I wasn't a big fan of her in Scream 5 but here she is given a lot more to do and her portrayal of Sam is everything that kept the film from sinking after the lacklustre and completely predictable reveal. The whole ending is a mixed bag, I loved everything to do with Sam's character but I felt the actual killers were totally forgettable and disappointing. 

But more so than that, the acting from all of the killers was truly awful, It's another Scream reveal that left me thinking "Is that it?" though one actor in particular deserved a Razzie Award. The main Ghostface after the reveal was cartoonish, then dead serious, then cartoonish again. It was like the actor couldn't decide which route he wanted to go with the character, It was easily the worst acting from anyone in the whole series and this actor alone nearly ruins the entire film, he is just that god damn terrible and ruins every single scene he is in.

Lastly, It was good to see Kirby back but they didn't know how to properly utilise her in the script. You'll know when you see it what I mean. They tried to do something with her character that left me thinking, really, you really think I'm going to buy that. Legacy characters do not work as red herrings because you know them too well for that, it's ...well, ironically THE RULES, get it.

Scream VI does make full use of its setting in New York and has a few great sequences in it and I loved the brutality of Ghostface before the reveal but as a whole while the film is fun, the ideas it plays with but never commits to would have been far, far better than what it ended up doing and everything it did choose to do other than its spectacular opening I've seen before in other scream movies and because of that Scream VI only gets a five star rating.