One key location full of Scream Easter eggs suggests a much more interesting sequel about the obsessive nerd fan service that has taken over so much big-scale blockbuster filmmaking. But that film seemingly exhausted all of their ideas about modern horror (not to mention most of the Scream legacy cast), leaving little for Scream VI to say or satirize. Their previous Scream at least played with the notion of a Scream legacyquel in clever ways. That’s disappointing, since this new Scream comes from the same creative team as the last one directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick. READ MORE: Our Full Recap of the Scream Series So Far Ghostface can never be heard by any of the heroes as he or she skulks around in combat boots, even when he or she is talking loudly into a phone through a voice changer three feet away from the person on the other end of the line. This happens with surprising and frustrating frequency in Scream VI. While the concern for an audience’s experience is admirable, that approach also speaks to an unfortunate fact: The killers’ motives are so random, and who lives and who dies is so arbitrary, that the filmmakers can literally shoot multiple versions of their story and any of them could plausibly be the solution. The killer’s identity is meaningless. Screams are not only slasher spoofs, they’re also whodunits, with the killer’s identity kept secret until a final, shocking reveal. The franchise has been so concerned about script leaks through the years that its creators have supposedly resorted to preparing multiple drafts of the screenplay, and even shooting multiple versions of scenes to ensure that the true spoilers don’t get out. Like Kennedy before her, Brown is extremely charming in these showcase monologue moments, although they’ve really run out of material if this one is a spoof of franchises, which was previously done in Scream 3 (and 4 and 5 too). In the last two films, it’s been Randy's niece Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown). In the first Scream trilogy, this key role was occupied by Jamie Kennedy’s Randy. The nerdy comic relief always gets a scene where they explain what kind of horror movie the characters are trapped in. The film always begins with a shocking cold open where a recognizable actress is stalked by Ghostface. In Scream VI, that honor goes to Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving, in a sequence that - to the movie’s credit - is genuinely surprising. (The “rules” this time include “No one is safe, not even the protagonist” an “Whatever happened last time, the opposite will occur.”) Each subsequent Scream found a new subset of horror to spoof sequels, trilogies, legacyquels and now, in the new Scream VI, IP-perpetuating mega-franchises. It’s been more than 25 years since the original Scream, which has now spawned as many or more sequels than most of the schlocky scary movies it was initially designed to critique. Plus, it’s always more fun to watch a smart movie than a dumb one, and to root for smart characters instead of idiots. (The stupider the potential victims, the fewer qualms the audience might feel about enjoying the twisted violence leveled against them.) Scream’s stroke of genius was to emphasize the characters’ intelligence by making them hyper-literate horror aficionados under attack from a deranged film nerd who kills according to the “rules” of the slasher genre. Putting fan surrogates on screen who understood (and, importantly, loved) horror films invited stronger identification on the part of the audience. Taunt your foes with distraction and acrobatic feats before falling from the sky to deliver swift death.Before Scream, the characters in so many slasher movies were dumb - and often by design. You must fight for your survival or you will be shredded into 8-bit guts. The Glitch Lord has captured our heroes and held them captive in a hellish world in the theme of a 1980’s synth combat arena.
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