Scream VI (2023)
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
Following the latest Ghostface killings, the four survivors leave Woodsboro behind and start a fresh chapter.
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What critics compared Scream VI to
It's been three years and countless controversies since "Scream VI" arrived on our screens…
…one that keeps the events of Scream VI firmly in play while clearing space for the story the series has been building toward since 1996.
After Scream VI expanded the franchise’s scale, including its ambitious New York City setting, this sequel feels noticeably pared back.
After Scream (2022) and Scream VI put a greater focus on Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and her sister Tara (Jenna Ortega) as the new leads, their departure from this series alongside formerly-attached director Christopher Landon forced a rewrite that put Sidney back as the face of this series.
As the franchise switched hands to directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett with Scream 5 and 6, the new heroine's (Melissa Barrera) brooding over being the offspring of Billy Loomis dragged the franchise into a suffocatingly grim terrain.
Following the success of 2023’s Scream VI – itself marked by the absence of franchise cornerstone Neve Campbell amid a pay dispute – the seventh entry endured director departures, cast exits, online backlash, and a very public implosion of its original creative direction.
Of course, it’s not a Scream movie without loads of references, and there are plenty of those here, too, including several fun nods to Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s Ready or Not.
Scream VI kicks off with a nod to Radio Silence’s fun and underrated Ready or Not by using Samara Weaving as the bait for Ghostface’s big opening kill. The shocker is that we immediately see who Ghostface is under the mask, as this has always been saved as a big final act reveal. Another twist brings the mystery back into the fold.
Her date texts, embarrassed at being unable to find the trendy restaurant, luring her out into the street, then into an alley, their chitchat revealing that she teaches ‘slashers’ which of course demands the infamous query ‘What’s your favorite scary movie?’ ‘Not that one,’ is the cheeky reply, but wit doesn’t save Laura Crane, whose killer rips off his mask to reveal one of her students, Jason Carvey (Tony Revolori).
But any momentum created by the film's electrifying opening sequence ("Scream" movies can still land those beginnings) is gone by the film's midway point, and returning director pair Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (they made 2019's comic-thriller "Ready or Not," as well as the savvier 2022 "Scream") ride the film to its close on two flat tires.
It starts early, too, with an extremely strong opening sequence: a college film professor played by Samara Weaving (of Bettinelli-Olpin & Gillet's Ready or Not) is tricked into a dark alley by one of her students, played by Tony Revolori, and killed.
This is the second “Scream” movie not directed by Wes Craven (“Ready or Not” directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett took over with the previous “legasequel” in 2022), and the first without franchise star Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott.
Episode 6 and “Scream VI” (2023) need to stop with that nonsense.