SCARY TALE OF N.Y.
Transplanted to a different city, gruesome and wickedly funny ‘Scream VI’ still hits all the right notes we’ve come to expect from the franchise
Just as the characters in the “Scream” franchise love to talk about horror movie tropes even as they’re in the middle of a horror movie, please indulge me as I address the main group of young people who have survived the bloody entertaining insanity of “Scream” (2022) and are trying to get on with their lives a year later.
Dear “Scream” survivor gang: After your deeply traumatic, physically and emotionally devastating and widely publicized experiences in Woodsboro, California, it’s understandable you’d want to get a fresh start thousands of miles away. Having said that, I’m thinking it might not have been the greatest idea to relocate en masse to New York City! It’s the kind of thing you’d all criticize if it happened in a “Stab” movie.
Nor does it help that New York looks like Montreal because “Scream VI” was filmed in Montreal, save for a few obligatory establishing drone shots. Nevertheless, off we go on another aggressively gruesome, wickedly funny and at times cleverly staged “Scream”-fest that cheerfully defies logic while hitting all the right notes we’ve come to expect from the franchise, from the prologue featuring an unwitting victim (in this case, Samara Weaving) who picks up the phone and probably won’t have to worry about paying next month’s bill through the you-gotta-be-kidding-me revelation there’s yet another Ghostface (or two) on the prowl to the final, extended gorefest featuring some fantastically disgusting kill shots and a couple of mildly surprising twists before the masks come off and the villain(s) go down.
We’ll tread lightly here and not reveal any plot points not already outlined in the trailer and advance publicity materials. The Core Four, as they come to call themselves, consists of Melissa Barrera’s Sam Carpenter, daughter of OG co-Ghostface Billy Loomis; Jenna Ortega’s Tara Carpenter, Sam’s younger half-sister; Jasmin Savoy Brown’s Mindy Meeks-Martin, niece of Randy, and Mindy’s twin brother Chad, played by Mason Gooding.
A year after the events of “Scream,” they’re living in New York City, where Tara, Mindy and Chad are attending “Blackmore University” (we know this because they like to wear sweatshirts saying Blackmore University), which seems to be somewhere in Manhattan, while Sam is working a couple of part-time jobs and focused mainly on never letting Tara out of her sight. They’ve all become celebrities of a sort, with many gawkers and trolls believing Sam actually orchestrated the murders in Woodsboro last year — a theory that was hardly killed off by Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers, who has written yet another book and is also working as a TV reporter based in New York as Ghostface surfaces and starts stabbing his (her?) way into the headlines.
Per usual, some new characters are introduced into the mix. Jack Champion’s Ethan is Chad’s roommate, while Lian Liberato’s Quinn lives with Sam and Tara. Josh Segarra plays Danny, the quiet hunk who lives across the way from Sam and could be a romantic interest. Dermot Mulroney, hamming it up as if he’s in an “SNL” sketch, is NYPD Detective Bailey, father of Quinn. Oh, and here comes “Scream 4” alum Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), who’s now an FBI agent based in Atlanta but makes the trip to New
York to lend a hand with the case, because that’s exactly how these criminal investigations work. Directors Tyler Gillet and Matt Bettinielli-Olpin (working from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick) stage a number of intense action sequences, as Ghostface continues to demonstrate an uncanny ability to enter domiciles unseen and swoop in on ya even as you’re on the phone, telling him to knock it off. Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega make for a terrific sister team, while Jasmin Savoy Brown is a scene-stealer as Mindy, a horror movie expert who often doesn’t see the horror movie development unspooling right in front of her. Of all the ridiculous and overblown albeit entertainingly grisly “Scream” finales, this might be the most outlandish and spectacularly brutal ending of all.
Of course, this being a “Scream” movie, as long as there are Ghostface costumes and “Stab” groupies out there, there’s always the possibility the ending isn’t really the ending after all.