SCREAM VI: I THINK I'M ALL SCREAMED OUT

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 movie stars Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Hayden Panettiere, and Courteney Cox, all reprising their roles from previous films, alongside Josh Segarra, Jack Champion, Devyn Nekoda, Liana Liberato, Tony Revolori, Samara Weaving, Henry Czerny, and Dermot Mulroney, newcomers to the ensemble cast. Scream VI follows a new Ghostface killer who targets the survivors of the "Woodsboro legacy attacks" in New York City.

Scream VI premiered 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 over $168 million worldwide on a budget of $35 million. It became the first installment in the franchise to gross $100 million at the domestic US box office since the second Scream film (1997) and is the highest-grossing Scream film in the United States and Canada.

The movie currently has an impressive 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an Audience Score of 91%. It also has a Metascore of 61 (based on 53 critic reviews) on Metacritic, with a User Score of 7.1, and a 6.9/10 on IMDB (based on 51,000 reviews).

Scream is the last franchise to come out of the Golden Age of Slasher Films that, in my mind, began with John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978. Having said that, I think it’s been way past time to put this franchise out to pasture. The first film was fun and unique, even though it could be “campy” at times in a way that its predecessors weren’t. But every film since then has gotten worse and worse. I typically have a rule with film franchises: anything past three is usually a bad idea, creatively. But this is where the business of filmmaking usually trumps the art, which is why these films keep getting made. This was also the first film that did not include Neve Campbell, reprising her role as Sydney Prescott, which leads me to believe that Paramount Pictures is trying to figure out how to continue the franchise, even past this film, without her.

This film was, as the kids say, “mid”, and it may have come down to the fact that, though they have clearly tried to freshen up this film franchise, it still basically follows the same formula as the Scream films of the past, making it highly predictable. At this point, you spend the entirety of the film trying to guess who will survive the film and who the killer is, which, despite the inevitable twist at the end, can still become an exercise in monotony, and ultimately dampens the viewing experience, in my honest opinion. The story beggars belief, as usual with this franchise. The writing is just okay (even for a slasher film). And the acting is equally pedestrian. But the writers try to make up for all that by playing “three-card monte” with the identity of the killers throughout the film as well as bringing back characters from the past, and killing off some as well. There are also some characters that miraculously survive their circumstances.

The final verdict? This film is a one-time watch from the comfort of your own home, and that’s IF you are a true fan of the franchise. If you’re not, you can absolutely skip it. But, should you decide that you need to see it, the film is still being shown in select theaters across the country. It’s also recently become available on Paramount Plus, Roku and Amazon Prime Video.